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LITTLE MASTERPIECES 






Little Masterpieces 

Edited by Bliss Perry 
LORD MACAULAY 

THE TASK OF THE MODERN HISTORIAN 

THE PURITANS 

THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS 

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON 

LORD BYRON 

ENGLAND UNDER THE RESTORATION 

THE DEATH OF CHARLES II. 

THE RESTORATION*OF 1688 

THE ORIGIN OF THE NATIONAL DEBT 



NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 



* I > A V,q 









15904 



Copyright, 1898, 

BY 

IK)!' 1 BLED AY & McCLURE CO. 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED* 



Introduction 



Editor's Introduction 

This volume of selections from the writings 
of Macaulay begins with that portion of his 
essay on " History " which deals with the 
functions of the modern historian. It was 
written at the age ot twenty-eight, and an- 
nounced a program to which the author 
steadily conformed throughout his literary 
career. Three years before, Macaulay 's essay 
on " Milton " had given him sudden fame, and 
the passage devoted to the Puritans, reprinted 
here, is a well-known example of the brilliant 
though somewhat over-accented style which 
was one of the causes ot his immediate success 
with the public. 

The pictorial method of writing history has 
never been more perfectly displayed than in 
the sketch of the trial of Warren Hastings. 
For fifty years it has been reprinted in read- 
ing-books ; to use literally one of Macaulay 's 
favorite and threadbare phrases, " every 
schoolboy " knows it ; and yet it cannot be 
read without a thrill ot enjoyment in the fa- 
miliar scene, or without admiration for the 
author's workmanship, 
vii 



Introduction 

The essays devoted to Dr. Johnson and to 
Lord Byron reveal some of the limitations in 
sympathy and insight that are only too char- 
acteristic of Macaulay 's mind. Dr. Johnson's 
gloomy spirit experienced passionate conflicts 
which the cheery, emphatic essayist could not 
comprehend ; nor was Macaulay altogether 
the man to measure the full sweep of Byron's 
wing. But the external traits of these two 
men of letters, and the impressions they made 
upon the London society of their times, are 
not likely to be so vividly ^depicted by any 
other hand. Nor has any critic pointed out 
more clearly than Macaulay certain defects — 
it is true they are very obvious defects — in 
Byron's dramatic poetry. The present \ 
gives only portions ot the two essays, bu. i ie 
endeavor has been made to select those 
passages, which have the most permanent in- 
terest and value. 

The first two extracts, from the " History " 
are drawn from the famous third chapter, 
which surveys the state of England in 1685. 
Of those minute and racy depictions of the va- 
rious aspects of English life at the Restoration ; 
the accounts of the country gentlemen and of 
the polite literature of the day are among the 
rnost^ skilful. The recital of the death of 
Charles II., at the opening of the fourth chap- 

viii 



Introduction 

ter, illustrates Macaulay's ease in narrative 
and his art in employing those insignificant 
details which the dignity of history has often 
neglected. The peculiar character of the Rev- 
olution of 1688, as it appeared to an English 
Whig at the middle of our own century,, is 
next given, in a compact and admirable pas- 
sage which closes the tenth chapter, of the 
" History." The selections end with a dis- 
cussion, taken from the nineteenth chapter, 
of the origin of the national debt, in which 
Macaulay displays his wonted liveliness and 
his incurable political optimism. 

Lord Macaulay suffers less than most writers 
of equal rank in being thus read by extracts. 
is no league-long roll, either of thought 
or » j/le, in the volumes with which he de- 
lighted his generation ; the reader may venture 
upon his pages as upon a channel voyage of 
short chopping seas and bright breezy weather. 
He has been one of the most popular writers 
of the century ; unfailingly entertaining, vigor- 
ous and clear, The time has indeed come, 
as Gladstone long ago predicted, when Mac- 
aulay is read with copious instruction but 
also with coprous reserve. But whatever re- 
serve the reader makes in view of Macaulay's 
obvious superficialities of thought and feeling, 
one cannot but respect his astounding infor- 
ix 



Introduction 

mation, his encouraging labor for the world's 
pleasure, and that honest, childlike admiration 
for his own age which made him confess, on 
entering the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851, 
that he felt as he did on entering St. Peter's. 

Bliss Perry. 



Contents 



PAGB 

Editor's Introduction vii 

Essays— Selections. 

The Task of the Modern Historian..: 3 

The Puritans 23 

The Trial of Warren Hastings 30 

Dr. Samuel Johnson 43 

His Biographer 43 

His Character and Career 52 

Lord Byron 93 

The Man 93 

The Poet 107 

History of England— Selections. 

England under the Restoration 123 

The Country Gentlemen 123 

Polite Literature 132 

The Death of Charles II 146 

The Revolution of 1688 166 

The. Origin of the National Debt. 180 



Selected Essays 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

From the essay on History, Edinburgh Review 
May, 1828. 

The best historians of later times have 
been seduced from truth, not by their imagi- 
nation, but by their reason. They far excel 
their predecessors in the art of deducing- 
general principles from facts. But, unhappily, 
they have fallen into the error of distorting 
facts to suit general principles. They arrive 
at the theory from looking at some of the 
phenomena, and the remaining phenomena 
they strain or curtail to suit the theory. For 
this purpose it is not necessary that they 
should assert what is absolutely false, for all 
questions in morals and politics are questions 
of comparison and degree. Any proposition 
which does not involve a contradiction in 
terms may, by possibility, be true ; and if all 
the circumstances which raise a probability 
in its favor be stated and enforced, and those 
which lead to an opposite conclusion be 
omitted or lightly passed over, it may appear 
to be demonstrated. In every human char- 

3 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

acter and transaction there is a mixture of 
good and evil ; — a little exaggeration, a little 
suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a 
watchful and searching skepticism with re- 
spect to the evidence on one side, a convenient 
credulity with respect to every report or 
tradition on the other, may easily make a 
saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourths 
This species of misrepresentation abounds 
in the most valuable works of modern his- 
torians. Herodotus tells his story like a 
slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities 
and prejudices, unacquainted with the es- 
tablished rules ot evidence, and uninstructed 
as to the obligations of his oath, confounds 
what he imagines with what he has seen and 
heard, and brings out facts, reports, conject- 
ures, and fancies in one mass. Hume is an 
accomplished advocate. Without positively 
asserting much more than he can prove, he 
gives prominence to all the circumstances 
which support his case ; he glides lightly over 
those which are unfavorable to it ; his own 
witnesses are applauded and encouraged ; the 
statements which seem to throw discredit on 
them are controverted ; the contradictions 
into which they fall are explained away ; a 
clear and connected abstract of their evidence 
is given. Every thing that is offered on the 

4 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

other side is scrutinized with the utmost 
severity ; every suspicious circumstance is a 
ground for comment and invective ; what 
cannot be denied is extenuated, or passed by 
without notice ; concessions even are some- 
times made ; but this insidious candor only in- 
creases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry. 
We have mentioned Hume as the ablest 
and most popular writer of his class ; but the 
charge which we have brought against him 
is one to which all our most distinguished 
historians are in some degree obnoxious. 
Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe 
censure. Of all the numerous culprits, how- 
ever, none is more deeply guilty than Mr. 
Mitford. We willingly acknowledge the ob- 
ligations which are due to his talents and 
industry. The modern historians of Greece 
had been in the habit of writing as if the 
world had learned nothing new during the 
last sixteen hundred years. Instead of illus- 
trating the events which they narrated, by the 
philosophy of a more enlightened age, they 
judged of antiquity by itself alone. They 
seemed to think that notions, long driven from 
every other corner of literature, had a pre- 
scriptive right to occupy this last fastness. 
They considered all the ancient historians as 
equally authentic. They scarcely made any 

5 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

distinction between him who related events 
at which he had himself been present, and 
him who, five hundred years after, composed 
a philosophical romance for a society which 
had, in the interval, undergone a complete 
change. It was all Greek, and all true ! The 
centuries which separated Plutarch from 
Thucydides seemed as nothing to men who 
lived in an age so remote. The distance of 
time produced an error similar to that which 
is sometimes produced by distance of place. 
There are many good ladies who think that 
all the people in India live together, and who 
charge a friend setting out for Calcutta with 
kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and 
Barthelemi, in the same manner, all the 
classics were contemporaries. 

Mr. Mitford certainly introduced great im- 
provements ; he showed us that men who 
wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes told lies ; 
he showed us that ancient history might be 
related in such a manner as to furnish not 
only allusions to schoolboys, but important 
lessons to statesmen. From that love of 
theatrical effect and high-flown sentiment 
which had poisoned almost every other work 
on the same subject, his book is perfectly free. 
But his passion for a theory as false, and far 
more ungenerous, led him substantially to 
6 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

violate truth in every page. Sentiments un- 
favorable to democracy are made with un- 
hesitating confidence, and with the utmost 
bitterness of language. Every charge brought 
against a monarch, or an aristocracy, is sifted 
with the utmost care. If it cannot be denied, 
some palliating supposition is suggested, or 
we are at least reminded that some circum- 
stance now unknown may have justified what 
at present appears unjustifiable. Two events 
are reported by the same author in the same 
sentence ; their truth rests on the same testi- 
mony ; but the one supports the darling 
hypothesis, and the other seems inconsistent 
with it. The one is taken and the other is 
left. 

The practice of distorting narrative into a 
conformity with theory, is a vice not so un- 
favorable as at first sight it may appear, to 
the interest of political science. We have 
compared the writers who indulge in it to 
advocates ; and we may add, that their con- 
flicting fallacies, like those of advocates, 
correct each other. It has always been held, 
in the most enlightened nations, that a tribunal 
will decide a judicial question most fairly, 
when it has heard two able men argue, as 
unfairly as possible, on the two opposite sides 
of it; and we are inclined to think that this 

7 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, superior 
eloquence and dexterity will make the worse 
appear the better reason ; but it is at least 
certain that the judge will be compelled to 
contemplate the case under two different as- 
pects. It is certain that no important con- 
sideration will altogether escape notice. 

This is, at present, the state of history. 
The poet laureate appears for the Church of 
England, Lingard for the Church of Rome. 
Brodie has moved to set aside the verdicts 
obtained by Hume ; and the cause in which 
Mitford succeeded is, we understand, about 
to be reheard. In the midst of these disputes, 
however, history proper, if we may use the 
term, is disappearing. The high, grave, im- 
partial summing up of Thucydides is nowhere 
to be found. 

^ While our historians are practising all the 
arts of controversy, they miserably neglect 
the art of narration, the art of interesting the 
affections and presenting pictures to the im- 
agination. That a writer may produce these 
effects without violating truth, is sufficiently 
proved by many excellent biographical works. 
The immense popularity which well-written 
books of this kind have acquired, deserves the 
serious consideration of historians. Voltaire's 
Charles the Twelfth, Marmontel's Memoirs, 
8 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's Account 
of Nelson, are perused with delight by the 
most frivolous and indolent. Whenever any 
tolerable book of the same description makes 
its appearance, the circulating libraries are 
mobbed ; the book societies are in commo- 
tion ; the new novel lies uncut ; the maga- 
zines and newspapers fill their columns with 
extracts. In the mean time, histories of great 
empires, written by men of eminent ability, 
lie unread on the shelves of ostentatious 
libraries. 

The writers of history seem to entertain an 
aristocratical contempt for the writers of 
memoirs. They think it beneath the dignity 
of men who describe the revolutions of nations 
to dwell on the details which constitute the 
charm of biography. They have imposed on 
themselves a code of conventional decencies 
as absurd as that which has been the bane 
of the French drama. The most charac- 
teristic and interesting circumstances are 
omitted or softened down, because, as we are 
told, they are too trivial for the majesty of 
history. The majesty of history seems to 
resemble the majesty of the poor King of 
Spain, who died a martyr to ceremony, be- 
cause the proper dignitaries were not at hand 
to render him assistance. 

9 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

That history would be more amusing if 
this etiquette were relaxed, will, we suppose, 
be acknowledged. But would it be less 
■dignified or useful ? What do we mean, 
when we say that one past event is important, 
and another insignificant ? No past event 
lias any intrinsic importance, The knowl- 
edge of it is valuable only as it leads us 
to form just calculations with respect to 
the future. A history which does not serve 
this purpose, though it may be filled with 
battles, treaties, and commotions, is as useless 
as the series of turnpike-tickets collected by 
Sir Mathew Mite. 

Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, in- 
stead of filling hundreds of folio pages with 
copies of state-papers, in which the same as- 
sertions and contradictions are repeated, till 
the reader is overpowered with weariness, 
had condescended to be the Bosweli of the 
Long Parliament. Let us suppose that he had 
exhibited to us the wise and lofty self-govern- 
ment of Hampden, leading while he seemed 
to follow, and propounding unanswerable 
arguments in the strongest forms, with the 
modest air of an inquirer anxious for infor- 
mation ; the delusions which misled the noble 
Spirit of Vane ; the coarse fanaticism which 
concealed the yet loftier genius of Cromwell, 
10 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

destined to control a mutinous army and a 
factious people, to abase the flag of Holland, 
to arrest the victorious arms of Sweden, and 
to hold the balance firm between the rival 
monarchies of France and Spain. Let us 
suppose that he had made his Cavaliers and 
Roundheads talk in their own style ; that he 
had reported some of the ribaldry of Rupert's 
pages, and some of the cant of Harrison and 
Fleetwood. Would not his work, in that 
case, have been more interesting ? Would it 
not have been more accurate ? 

A history in which every particular in- 
cident may be true, may on the whole be 
false. The circumstances which have most 
influence on the happiness of mankind, the 
changes of manners and morals, the transi- 
tion of communities from poverty to wealth, 
from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity 
to humanity — these are, for the most part, 
noiseless revolutions. Their progress is 
rarely indicated by what historians are pleased 
to call important events. They are not 
achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. 
They are sanctioned by no treaties, and re- 
corded in no archives. They are carried on 
in every school, in every church, behind ten 
thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. 
The upper current of society presents no 
ii 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

certain criterion by which we can judge of 
the direction in which the under current flows. 
We read of defeats and victories. But we 
know that nations may be miserable amidst 
victories, and prosperous amidst defeats. 
We read of the fall of wise ministers, and of 
the rise of profligate favorites. But we must 
remember how small a proportion the good 
or evil affected by a single statesman can bear 
to the good or evil of a great social system. 

Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a 
gnat mounted on an elephant, and laying 
down theories as to the whole internal struct- 
ure of the vast animal, from the phenomena 
of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the 
geologists ; but it is very applicable to those 
historians who write as if the body politic 
were homogeneous, who look only on the 
surface of affairs, and never think of the 
mighty and various organization which lies 
deep below. 

In the works of such writers as these, Eng- 
land, at the close of the Seven Years' War, is 
in the highest state of prosperity. At the 
close of the American War, she is in a 
miserable and degraded condition ; as if the 
people were not on the whole as rich, as well 
governed, and as well educated at the latter 
period as at the former. We have read books 

12 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

called Histories of England, under the reign 
of George the Second in which the rise of 
Methodism is not even mentioned. A hun- 
dred years hence, this breed of authors will, 
we hope, be extinct. If it should still exist, 
the late ministerial interregnum will be de- 
scribed in terms which will seem to imply- 
that all government was at an end ; that the 
social contract was annulled, and that the 
hand of every man was against his neighbor, 
until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet 
educed order out of the chaos of anarchy. 
We are quite certain that misconceptions as 
gross prevail at this moment, respecting many 
important parts of our annals. 
^The effect of historical reading is analo- 
gous, in many respects, to that produced by 
foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, 
is transported into a new state of society. 
He sees new fashions. He hears new modes 
of expression. His mind is enlarged by con- 
templating the wide diversities of laws, of 
morals, and of manners. But men may travel 
far, and return with minds as contracted as 
if they had never stirred from their own 
market-town. In the same manner, men 
may know the dates of many battles, and the 
genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be 
no wiser. Most people look at past times as 

1 3 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

princes look at foreign countries. More than 
one illustrious stranger has landed on our 
island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined 
with the king, has hunted with the master of 
the stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, 
and a knight of the garter installed ; has can- 
tered along Regent street ; has visited St. 
Paul's, and noted down its dimensions, and 
has then departed, thinking that he has seen 
England. He has, in fact, seen a few public 
buildings, public men, and public ceremonies. 
But of the vast and complex system of society, 
of the fine shades of national character, of 
the practical operation of government and 
laws, he knows nothing. He who would un- 
derstand these things rightly, must not con- 
fine his observations to palaces and solemn 
days. He must see ordinary men as they 
appear in their ordinary business, and in 
their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in 
the crowds of the exchange and the coffee- 
house. He must obtain admittance to the 
convivial table and the domestic hearth. He 
must bear with vulgar expressions. He must 
not shrink from exploring even the retreats of 
misery. He who wishes to understand the 
condition of mankind in former ages, must 
proceed on the same principle. If he attends 
only to public transactions, to wars, con- 

14 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

gresses, and debates, his studies will be as 
unprofitable as the travels of those imperial, 
royal, and serene sovereigns, who form their 
judgment of our island from having gone in 
state to a few fine sights, and from having 
held formal conferences with a few great 
officers. 

^The perfect historian is he in whose work 
the character and spirit of an age is exhibited 
in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes 
no expression to his character, which is not 
authenticated by sufficient testimony. But 
by judicious selection, rejection, and arrange- 
ment, he gives to truth those attractions which 
have been usurped by fiction. In his nar- 
rative a due subordination is observed ; some 
transactions are prominent, others retire. 
But the scale on which he represents them is 
increased or diminished, not according to the 
dignity of the persons concerned in them, but 
according to the degree in which they eluci- 
date the condition of society and the nature 
of man. He shows us the court, the camp, 
and the senate. But he shows us also the 
nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculi- 
arity of manner, no familiar saying, as too 
insignificant for his notice, which is not too 
insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, 
of religion, and of education, and to mark the 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

progress of the human mind. Men will not 
merely be described, but will be made inti- 
mately known to us. The changes of manners 
will be indicated, not merely by a few general 
phrases, or a few extracts from statistical 
documents, but by appropriate images pre- 
sented in every line. 

If a man, such as we are supposing, should 
write the history of England, he would as- 
suredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the 
negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial 
changes. But with these he would intersperse 
the details which are the charm of historical 
romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a 
beautiful painted window, which was made 
by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass 
which had been rejected by his master. It is 
so far superior to every other in the church, 
that, according to the tradition, the vanquished 
artist killed himself from mortification. Sir 
Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used 
those fragments of truth which historians 
have scornfully thrown behind them, in a 
manner which may well excite their envy. 
He has constructed out of their gleanings 
works which, even considered as histories, are 
scarcely less valuable than theirs. But a 
truly great historian would reclaim those 
materials which the novelist has appropriated. 
16 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

The history of the government and the history 
of the people would be exhibited in that mode 
in which alone they can be exhibited justly, 
in inseparable conjunction and intermixture. 
We should not then have to look for the wars 
and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for 
their phraseology in Old Mortality ; for one 
half of King James in Hume, and for the other 
half in the Fortunes of Nigel. 

The early part of our imaginary history 
would be rich with coloring from romance, 
ballad, and chronicle. We should find our- 
selves in the company of knights such as 
those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as 
those who rode with Chaucer from the 
Tabard. Society would be shown from the 
highest to the lowest — from the royal cloth of 
state to the den of the outlaw ; from the 
throne of the legate to the chimney-corner 
where the begging friar regaled himself. 
Palmers, minstrels, crusaders — the stately 
monastery, with the good cheer in its re- 
fectory, and the high-mass in its chapel — the 
manor-house, with its hunting and hawking 
— the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, 
the trumpets and the cloth of gold — would 
give truth and life to the representation. We 
should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, 
the importance of the privileged burgher, 
2 17 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

and the tierce and haughty spirit which 
swelled under the collar of the degraded 
villain. The revival of letters would not 
merely be described in few magnificent 
periods. We should discern, in innumerable 
particulars, the fermentation of mind, the 
eager appetite for knowledge, which distin- 
guished the sixteenth from the fifteenth cen- 
tury. In the Reformation we should see, not 
merely a schism which changed the ecclesi- 
astical constitution of England and the mutual 
relations of the European powers, but a moral 
war which raged in every family, which set 
the father against the son, and the son against 
the father, the mother against the daughter, 
and the daughter against the mother. Henry 
would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. 
We should have the change of his character 
from his profuse and joyous youth to his sav- 
age and imperious old age. We should per- 
ceive the gradual progress of selfish and 
tyrannical passions, in a mind not naturally 
insensible or ungenerous ; and to the last we 
should detect some remains of that open and 
noble temper which endeared him to a people 
whom he oppressed, struggling with the hard- 
ness of despotism and the irritability of 
disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her 
weakness, and in all her strength, surrounded 
18 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

by the handsome favorites whom she never 
trusted, and the wise old statesmen whom she 
never dismissed, uniting in herself the most 
contradictory qualities of both her parents — 
the coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of 
Anne — the haughty and resolute spirit of 
Henry. We have no hesitation in saying, 
that a great artist might produce a portrait of 
this remarkable woman, at least as striking as 
that in the novel of Kenilworth, without em- 
ploying a single trait not authenticated by 
ample testimony. In the mean time» we 
should see arts cultivated, wealth accu- 
mulated, the conveniences of life improved. 
We should see the keeps, where nobles, in- 
secure themselves, spread insecurity around 
them, gradually giving place to the halls of 
peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, 
and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We 
should see towns extended, deserts cultivated, 
the hamlets of fishermen turned into wealthy 
havens, the meal of the peasant improved, 
and his hut more commodiously furnished. 
We should see those opinions and feelings 
which produced the great struggle against the 
house of Stuart, slowly growing up in the 
bosom of private families, before they mani- 
fested themselves in parliamentary debates. 
Then would come the civil war. Those 

*9 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

skirmishes, on which Clarendon dwells so 
minutely, would be told, as Thucydides would 
have told them, with perspicuous conciseness, 
They are merely connecting links. But the 
great characteristics of the age, the loyal en- 
thusiasm of the brave English gentry, the 
fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, 
drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced 
the royal cause — the austerity of the Presby- 
terian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance 
of the Independent preachers in the camp, the 
precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty 
scruples, the affected accents, the absurd 
names and phrases which marked the Puri- 
tans — the valor, the policy, the public spirit 
which lurked beneath these ungraceful dis- 
guises — the dreams of the raving Fifth-mon- 
archy-man — the dreams, scarcely less wild, of 
the philosophic republican — all these would 
enter into the representation, and render it at 
once more exact and more striking. 

The instruction derived from history thus 
written would be of a vivid and practical char- 
acter. It would be received by the imagina- 
tion as well as by the reason. It would be not 
merely traced on the mind, but branded into 
it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which 
can be learned, in no other manner. As the 
history of states is generally written, the 
20 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

greatest and most momentous revolutions 
seem to come upon them like supernatural 
inflictions, without warning or cause. But 
the fact is, that such revolutions are almost 
always the consequence of moral changes, 
which have gradually passed on the mass 
of the community, and which ordinarily pro- 
ceed far before their progress is indicated by 
any public measure. An intimate knowledge 
of the domestic history of nations is there- 
fore absolutely necessary to the prognosis 
of political events. A narrative defective in 
this respect is as useless as a medical treatise 
which should pass by all the symptoms at- 
tendant on the early stage of a disease, and 
mention only what occurs when the patient 
is beyond the reach of remedies. 

An historian, such as we have been attempt- 
ing to describe, would indeed be an intel- 
lectual prodigy. In his mind, powers, scarcely 
compatible with each other, must be tempered 
into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner 
see another Shakspeare or another Homer. 
The highest excellence to which any single 
faculty can be brought would be less surpris- 
ing than such a happy and delicate combina- 
tion of qualities. Yet the contemplation of 
imaginary models is not an unpleasant or 
useless employment of the mind. It cannot 



The Task of the Modern Historian 

indeed produce perfection, but it produces 
improvement, and nourishes that generous 
and liberal fastidiousness, which is not incon- 
sistent with the strongest sensibility to merit, 
and which, while it exalts our conceptions of 
the art, does not render us unjust to the artist. 



33 



The Puritans 

From the essay on Milton, Edinburgh Review^ 
August, 1825. 

We would speak first of the Puritans, the 
most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which 
the world has ever produced. The odious 
and ridiculous parts of their character lie on 
the surface. He that runs may read them ; 
nor have there been wanting attentive and 
malicious observers to point them out. For 
many years after the Restoration, they were 
the theme of unmeasured invective and deri- 
sion. They were exposed to the utmost 
licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at 
the time when the press and the stage were 
most licentious. They were not men of 
letters ; they were, as a body, unpopular ; 
they could not defend themselves ; and the 
public would not take them under its protec- 
tion. They were therefore abandoned, with- 
out reserve, to the tender mercies of the 
satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious 
simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, 
their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their 
long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scrip- 

23 



The Puritans 

tural phrases which they introduced on every 
occasion, their contempt of human learning, 
their detestation of polite amusements, were 
indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is 
not from the laughers alone that the philos- 
ophy of history is to be learnt. And he who 
approaches this subject should carefully guard 
against the influence of that potent ridicule, 
which has already misled so many excellent 
writers. 

" Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il no 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene : 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro a desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."* 

Those who roused the people to resistance 
— who directed their measures through along 
series of eventful years — who' formed, out 
of the most unpromising materials, the finest 
army that Europe had ever seen — who tram- 
pled down king, church, and aristocracy — 
who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition 
and rebellion, made the name of England ter- 
rible to every nation on the face of the earth, 
were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their ab- 
surdities were mere external badges, like the 
signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. 
We regret that these badges were not more 
attractive. We regret that a body, to whose 
courage and talents mankind has owed inesti- 

* Gerusalemme Liberata, xv. 57. 
24 



The Puritans 

mable obligations, had not the lofty elegance 
which distinguished some of the adherents 
of Charles I., or the easy good breeding for 
which the court of Charles II. was celebrated. 
But, if we must make our choice, we shall, 
like Bassanio in the play, turn from the spe- 
cious caskets, which contain only the death's 
head and the fool's head, and fix our choice 
on the plain leaden chest which conceals the 
treasure. 

The Puritans were men whose minds had 
derived a peculiar character from the daily 
contemplation of superior beings and external 
interests. Not content with acknowledging, 
in general terms, an overruling Providence, 
they habitually ascribed every event to the 
will of the Great Being, for whose power noth- 
ing was too vast, for whose inspection noth- 
ing was too minute. To know him, to serve 
him, to enjoy him, was with them the great 
end of existence. They rejected with con- 
tempt the ceremonious homage which other 
sects substituted for the pure worship of the 
soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses 
of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they 
aspired to gaze full on the intolerable bright- 
ness, and to commune with him face to face. 
Hence originated their contempt for terres- 
trial distinctions. The difference between 

2 5 



The Puritans 

the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed 
to vanish, when compared with the boundless 
interval which separated the whole race from 
him on whom their own eyes were constantly- 
fixed. They recognized no title to superiority 
but his favor ; and, confident of that favor, 
they despised all the accomplishments and 
all the dignities of the world. If they were 
unacquainted with the works of philosophers 
and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles 
of God. If their names were not found in the 
registers of heralds, they felt assured that 
they were recorded in the Book of Life. If 
their steps were not accompanied by a splen- 
did train of menials, legions of ministering 
angels had charge over them. Their palaces 
were houses not made with hands : their 
diadems, crowns of glory which should never 
fade away ! On the rich and the eloquent, on 
nobles and priests, they looked down with 
contempt : for they esteemed themselves rich 
in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in 
a more sublime language — nobles by the right 
of an earlier creation, and priests by the im- 
position of a mightier hand. The very mean- 
est of them was a being to whose fate a 
mysterious and terrible importance belonged 
— on whose slightest actions the spirits of 
light and darkness looked with anxious interest 
26 



The Puritans 

— who had been destined, before heaven and 
earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which 
should continue when heaven and earth should 
have passed away. Events which short- 
sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes 
had been ordained on his account! For his 
sake empires had risen, and flourished, and 
decayed. For his sake the Almighty had 
proclaimed his will by the pen of the evan- 
gelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had 
been rescued by no common deliverer from 
the grasp of no common foe. He had been 
ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, 
by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was 
for him that the sun had been darkened, that 
the rocks had been rent, that the dead had 
arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the 
sufferings of her expiring God ! 

Thus the Puritan was made up of two dif- 
ferent men, the one all self-abasement, peni- 
tence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, 
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated 
himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he 
set his foot on the neck of his king. In his 
devotional retirement, he prayed with convul- 
sions, and groans, and tears. He was half 
maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. 
He heard the lyres of angels, or the tempting 
whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of 
- 27 



The Puritans 

the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from 
the dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, 
he thought himself intrusted with the scepter 
ot the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he 
cried in the bitterness of his soul that God 
had hid his face Irom him. But when he 
took his seat in the council or girt on his 
sword for war, these tempestuous workings 
of the soul had left no perceptible trace be- 
hind them. People, who saw nothing of the 
godly but their uncouth visages, and heard 
nothing irom them but their groans and their 
whining hymns, might laugh at them. But 
those had little reason to laugh who encoun- 
tered them in the hall of debate, or in the 
field of battle. These fanatics brought to 
civil and military affairs a coolness of judg- 
ment and an immutability of purpose which 
some writers have thought inconsistent with 
their religious zeal, but which were in fact 
the necessary effects of it. The intensity of 
their feelings on one subject made them tran- 
quil on every other. One overpowering senti- 
ment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, 
ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors 
and pleasure its charms. They had their 
smiles and their tears, their raptures and 
their sorrows, but not for the things of this 
world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, 
28 



The Puritans 

had cleared their minds from every vulgar 
passion and prejudice, and raised them above 
the influence of danger and of corruption. It 
sometimes might lead them to pursue un- 
wise ends, but never to choose unwise means. 
They went through the world like Sir Arte- 
gale's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing 
and trampling down oppressors, mingling 
with human beings, but having neither part 
nor lot in human infirmities ; insensible to 
fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be 
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood 
by any barrier, 

Such we believe to have been the character 
of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity 
of their manners. We dislike the sullen 
gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowl- 
edge that the tone of their minds was often 
injured by straining after things too high for 
mortal reach. And we know that, in spite 
of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell 
into the worst vices of that bad system, in- 
tolerance and extravagant austerity — that 
they had their anchorites and their crusades, 
their Dunstans and their Do Montforts, their 
Dominies and their Escobars. Yet when all 
circumstances are taken into consideration, 
we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, 
a wise, an honest, and a useful body. 
29 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

From the essay on Warren Hastings, Edinburgh 
Review, October, 1841. 

In the mean time, the preparations for the 
trial had proceeded rapidly ; and on the 13th 
of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court 
commenced. There have been spectacles 
more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with 
jewelry and cloth of gold, more attractive to 
grown-up children, than that which was then 
exhibited at Westminster ; but, perhaps, there 
never was a spectacle so well calculated to 
strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an im- 
aginative mind. All the various kinds of in- 
terest which belong to the near and to the 
distant, to the present and to the past, were 
collected on one spot and in one hour. All 
the talents and all the accomplishments which 
are developed by liberty and civilization were 
now displayed, with every advantage that 
could be derived both from co-operation and 
from contrast. Every step in the proceedings 
carried the mind either backward, through 
many troubled centuries, to the days when the 

3° 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

foundations of the constitution were laid ; or 
far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to 
dusky nations living under strange stars, wor- 
shipping strange gods, and writing strange 
characters from right to left. The High Court 
of Parliament was to sit, according to forms 
handed down from the days of the Plantage- 
nets, on an Englishman accused of exercising 
tyranny over the lord ot the holy city of Ben- 
ares, and the ladies of the princely house of 
Oude. 

The place was worthy of such a trial. It 
was the great hall of William Rufus ; the hall 
which had resounded with acclamations at the 
inauguration of thirty kings ; the hall which 
had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and 
the just absolution of Somers ; the hall where 
the eloquence ol Strafford had for a moment 
awed and melted a victorious party inflamed 
with just resentment ; the hall where Charles 
had confronted the High Court of Justice with 
the placid courage which has half redeemed his 
fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was 
wanting. The avenues were lined with grena- 
diers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. 
The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were mar- 
shalled by the heralds under Garter-King-at- 
Arms. The judges, in their vestments of 
state, attended to give advice on points of law, 

3 1 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

Near a hundred and seventy Lords, three- 
fourths of the Upper House, as the Upper 
House then was, walked in solemn order Irom 
their usual place of assembling to the tribu- 
nal. The junior baron present led the way — 
Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his 
memorable defence of Gibraltar against the 
fleets and armies of France and Spain. The 
long procession was closed by the Duke of Nor- 
folk, Earl Marshal ol the realm, by the great 
dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of 
the king. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, 
conspicuous by his fine person and noble 
bearing. The gray old walls were hung with 
scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by 
such an audience as had rarely excited the iears 
or the emulation of an orator. There were 
gathered together, from all parts ot a great, 
free, enlightened and prosperous realm, grace 
and female loveliness, wit and learning, the rep- 
resentatives of every science and of every art. 
There were seated around the queen the fair- 
haired young daughters of the house ot Bruns- 
wick. There the ambassadors of great kings 
and commonwealths gazed with admiration 
on a spectacle which no other country in the 
world could present. There Siddons, in the 
prime of her majestic beauty, looked with 
emotion on a scene surpassing all the imi- 

32 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

tations of the stage. There the historian of 
the Roman Empire thought of the days when 
Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against 
Verres ; and when, before a senate which had 
still some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered 
against the oppressor of Africa. There were 
seen, side by side, the greatest painter and 
the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle 
had allured Reynolds from that easel which 
has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads 
of so many writers and statesmen, and the 
sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It 
had induced Parr to suspend his labors in 
that dark and profound mine from which he 
had extracted a vast treasure of erudition 
— a treasure too olten buried in the earth, 
too often paraded with injudicious and intele- 
gant ostentation ; but still precious, massive, 
and splendid. There appeared the voluptu- 
ous charms of her to whom the heir of 
the throne had in secret plighted his faith. 
There, too, was she, the beautiful mother of a 
beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose deli- 
cate features, lighted up by love and music, 
art has rescued from the common decay. 
There were the members of that brilliant 
society which quoted, criticised, and ex- 
changed repartees, under the rich peacock 
hangings of Mrs. Montague. And here the 

3 33 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

ladies, whose lips, more persuasive than those 
of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster 
election against palace and treasury, shone 
round Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. 

The Sergeants made proclamation. Hast- 
ings advanced to the bar and bent his knee. 
The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that 
great presence. He had ruled an extensive 
and populous country, had made laws and 
treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and 
pulled down princes. And in his high place 
he had so borne himself, that all had feared 
him, that most had loved him, and that hatred 
itself could deny him no title to glory, except 
virtue. He looked like a great man and not 
like a bad man. A person small and ema- 
ciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage 
which, while it indicated deference to the 
court, indicated also habitual self-possession 
and self-respect ; a high and intellectual fore- 
head ; a brow pensive, but not gloomy ; a 
mouth of inflexible decision; a face pale and 
worn, but serene, on which was written, as legi- 
bly as under the great picture in the Council- 
chamber at Calcutta, Mens cequa in arduis ; — 
such was the aspect with which the great 
proconsul presented himself to his judges. 

His counsel accompanied him, men all of 
whom were afterwards raised by their talents 

34 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

and learning to the highest posts in their pro- 
fession — the bold and strong-minded Law, 
afterwards Chief Justice of the King's Bench ; 
the more humane and eloquent Dallas, after- 
wards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ; and 
Plomer, who, nearly twenty years later, suc- 
cessfully conducted in the same high court the 
defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently 
became Vice-Chancellor and Master of the 
Rolls. 

But neither the culprit nor his advocates at- 
tracted so much notice as the accusers. In 
the midst of the blaze of red drapery, a space 
had been fitted up with green benches and 
tables for the Commons. The managers, 
with Burke at their head, appeared in full 
dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to 
remark that even Fox, generally so regardless 
of his appearance, had paid to the illustrious 
tribunal the compliment ol wearing a bag and 
sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the con- 
ductors of the impeachment ; and his com- 
manding, copious, and sonorous eloquence 
was wanting to that great muster of various 
talents. Age and blindness had unfitted 
Lord North for the duties of a public prose- 
cutor and his friends were left without the 
help of his excellent sense, his tact, and his 
urbanity But, in spite of the absence of these 

35 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

two distinguished members of the Lower 
House, the box in which the managers stood 
contained an array of speakers such as perhaps 
had not appeared together since the great age 
of Athenian eloquence. There stood Fox and 
Sheridan, the English Demosthenes and the 
English Hyperides. There was Burke, igno- 
rant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapt- 
ing his reasonings and his style to the capacity 
and taste of his hearers ; but in aptitude of 
comprehension and richness of imagination 
superior to every orator, ancient or modern. 
There, with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, 
appeared the finest gentleman of the age — his 
form developed by every manly exercise — his 
face beaming with intelligence and spirit — 
the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled 
Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such 
men, did the youngest manager pass un- 
noticed. At an age when most ot those who dis- 
tinguish themselves in life are still contending 
for prizes and fellowships at college, he had 
won for himself a conspicuous place in parlia- 
ment. No advantage of fortune or connection 
was wanting that could set off to the height 
his splendid talents and his unblemished honor. 
At twenty-three he had been thought worthy 
to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who 
appeared as the delegates of the British Com- 

36 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

mons, at the bar of the British nobility. All 
who stood at that bar save him alone, are gone 
— culprit, advocates, accusers. To the gen- 
eration which is now in the vigor of life, he is 
the sole representative of a great age which 
has passed away. But those who, within the 
last ten years, have listened with delight, till 
the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the 
House of Lords, to the lofty and animated 
eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to 
form some estimate of the powers of a race of 
men among whom he was not the foremost. 

The charges and the answers of Hastings 
were first read. This ceremony occupied two 
whole days, and was rendered less tedious 
than it would otherwise have been, by the 
silver voice and just emphasis of Cowper, the 
clerk of the court, a near relation of the 
amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. 
Four sittings of the court were occupied by 
his opening speech, which was intended to be 
a general introduction to all the charges. 
With an exuberance of thought and a splen- 
dor of diction which more than satisfied the 
highly-raised expectation of the audience, he 
described the character and institutions of the 
natives of India ; recounted the circumstances 
in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had 
originated ; and set forth the constitution of 

37 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

the Company and of the English Presidencies. 
Having thus attempted to communicate to 
his hearers an idea of Eastern society, as vivid 
as that which existed in his own mind, he 
proceeded to arrange the administration of 
Hastings, as systematically conducted in de- 
fiance of morality and public law. The energy 
and pathos of the great orator extorted ex- 
pressions of unwonted admiration even from 
the stern and hostile Chancellor ; and for a 
moment, seemed to pierce even the resolute 
heart of the defendant. The ladies in the 
galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of elo- 
quence, excited by the solemnity of the occa- 
sion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their 
taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncon- 
trollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled 
out ; smelling bottles were handed round ; 
hysterical sobs and screams were heard ; and 
Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At 
length the orator concluded. Raising his 
voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded 
— "Therefore," said he, " hath it with all con- 
fidence been ordered by the Commons of 
Great Britain, that I impeach Warren Hast- 
ings of high crimes and misdemeanors. I 
impeach him in the name of the Commons 
House of Parliament, whose trust he has be- 
trayed. I impeach him in the name of the' 

38 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

English nation, whose ancient honor he has 
sullied. I impeach him in the name of the 
people of India, whose rights he has trodden 
under foot, and whose country he has turned 
into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human 
nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the 
name of every age, in the name of every rank, 
I impeach the common enemy and oppressor 
of all ! " 

When the deep murmur of various emotions 
had subsided, Mr. Fox rose to address the 
Lords respecting the course of proceedings to 
be followed. The wish of the accuser was, 
that the court would bring to a close the in- 
vestigation of the first charge before the second 
was opened. The wish of Hastings and his 
counsel was, that the managers should open 
all the charges, and produce all the evidence 
for the prosecution, before the defence began. 
The Lords retired to their own house, to con- 
sider the question. The Chancellor took the 
side of Hastings. Lord Loughborough, who 
was now in opposition, supported the demand 
of the managers. The division showed which 
way the inclination of the tribunal leaned. 
A majority of near three to one decided 
in favor of the course for which Hastings 
contended. 

When the court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted 

39 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

by Mr. Grey, opened the charge respecting 
Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in 
reading papers and hearing witnesses. The 
next article was that relating to the Princesses 
of Oude. The conduct of this part of the case 
was intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of 
the public to hear him was unbounded. The 
sparkling and highly-finished declamation 
lasted two days ; but the Hall was crowded to 
suffocation during the whole time, It was said 
that tifty guineas had been paid for a single 
ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded, con- 
trived, with a knowledge of stage-effect which 
his father might have envied, to sink back, as if 
exhausted, into the arms of Burke, who hugged 
him with the energy of generous admiration ! 

June was now far advanced. The session 
could not last much longer, and the progress 
which had been made in the impeachment 
was not very satisfactory. There were twenty 
charges. On two only of these had even the 
case for the prosecution been heard ; and it 
was now a year since Hastings had been ad- 
mitted to bail. 

The interest taken by the public in the trial 
was great when the court began to sit, and 
rose to the height when Sheridan spoke on 
the charges relating to the Begums. From 
that time the excitement went down fast. The 
40 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty. 
The great displays of rhetoric were over. 
What was behind was not of a nature to en- 
tice men of letters from their books in the 
morning, or to tempt ladies who had left the 
masquerade at two, to be out of bed before 
eight. There remained examinations and 
cross-examinations. There remained state^ 
ments of accounts. There remained the read- 
ing of papers, filled with words unintelligible 
to English ears — with lacs and crores, zemin- 
dars and aumils, sunnuds and perwannahs, 
jagnires and nuzzurs. There remained bicker- 
ings, not always carried on with the best taste 
or with the best temper, between the managers 
of the impeachment and the counsel for the de- 
fence, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. 
Law. There remained the endless marches 
and countermarches of the Peers between their 
house and the hall ; for as often as a point of 
law was to be discussed their lordships retired 
to discuss it apart ; and the consequence was, 
as the late Lord Stanhope wittily said, that the 
judges walked and the trial stood still. 

It is to be added, that in the spring of 1788, 
when the trial commenced, no important ques- 
tion, either of domestic or foreign policy, ex- 
cited the public mind. The proceeding in 
Westminster Hall, therefore naturally ex* 

41 



The Trial of Warren Hastings 

cited most of the attention of Parliament and 
of the public. It was the one great event of 
that season. But in the following year, the 
king's illness, the debates on the regency, the 
expectation of a change of ministry, completely 
diverted public attention from Indian affairs ; 
and within a fortnight after George the Third 
had returned thanks in St. Paul's for his re- 
covery, the States General of France met at 
Versailles. In the midst of the agitation pro- 
duced by those events, the impeachment was 
for a time almost forgotten. 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

From the essay on Croker's Edition of Bos well's Life 
of Johnson, Edinburgh Review, September 1831. 

His Biographer 

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, 
a very great work. Homer is not more de^ 
cidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare 
is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, 
Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of 
orators, than Boswell is the first of biograph- 
ers. He has no second. He has distanced 
all his competitors so decidedly, that it is not 
worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, 
and the rest nowhere. 

We are not sure that there is in the whole 
history of the human intellect so strange a 
phenomenon as this book. Many of the 
greatest men that ever lived have written 
biography. Boswell was one .of the smallest 
men that ever lived ; and he has beaten them 
all. He was, if we are to give any credit to 
his own account, or to the united testimony 
of all who knew him, a man of the meanest 

43 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

and feeblest intellect. Johnson described 
him as a fellow who had missed his only 
chance of immortality, by not having been 
alive when the Dunciad was written. Beau- 
clerk used his name as a proverbial expression 
for a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the 
whole of that brilliant society which has owed 
to him the greater part of its fame. He was 
always laying himself at the feet of some 
eminent man, and begging to be spit upon 
and trampled upon. He was always earning 
some ridiculous nickname, and then, " bind- 
ing it as a crown unto him," — not merely in 
metaphor, but literally. He exhibited him- 
self at the Shakspeare Jubilee, to all the 
crowd which filled Stratford-on-Avon, with a 
placard around his hat bearing the inscription 
of Corsica Boswell. In his Tour, he pro- 
claimed to all the world, that at Edinburgh 
he was known by the appellation of Paoli 
Boswell. Servile and impertinent — shallow 
and pedantic — a bigot and a sot — bloated 
with family pride, and eternally blustering 
about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet 
stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, 
a common butt in the taverns of London — 
so curious to know everybody who was talked 
about, that Tory and High Churchman as he 
was, he maneuvered, we have been told, for 

44 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

an introduction to Tom Paine — so vain of the 
most childish distinctions, that, when he had 
been to court, he drove to the office where 
his book was being printed without changing 
his clothes, and summoned all the printer's 
devils to admire his new ruffles and sword ; 
such was this man; and such he was con- 
tent and proud to be. Everything which 
another man would have hidden — everything, 
the publication of which would have made 
another man hang himself, was matter of 
gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and 
diseased mind. What silly things he said — 
what bitter retorts he provoked — how at one 
place he was troubled with evil presentiments 
which came to nothing — how at another 
place, on waking from a drunken doze, he 
read the Prayer-book, and took a hair of the 
dog that had bitten him — how he went to see 
men hanged, and came away maudlin — how 
he added five hundred pounds to the fortune 
of one of his babies, because she was not 
frightened at Johnson's ugly face — how he 
was frightened out of his wits at sea — and 
how the sailors quieted him as they would 
have quieted a child — how tipsy he was at 
Lady Cork's one evening, and how much his 
merriment annoyed the ladies — how imperti- 
nent he was to the Duchess of Argyle, and 

45 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

with what stately contempt she put down his 
impertinence — how Colonel Macleod sneered 
to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness — 
how his father and the very wife ot his bosom 
laughed and fretted at his fooleries — all these 
things he proclaimed to all the world, as if 
they had been subjects for pride and osten- 
tatious rejoicing. All the caprices ot his 
temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all the 
hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the 
air, he displayed with a cool self-complacency, 
a perfect unconsciousness that he was making 
a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to 
find a parallel in the whole history of man- 
kind. He has used many people ill, but as- 
suredly he has used nobody so ill as himself. 

That such a man should have written one 
of the best books in the world, is strange 
enough. But this is not all. Many persons 
who have conducted themselves foolishly 
in active life, and whose conversation has in- 
dicated no superior powers of mind, have 
written valuable books. Goldsmith was very 
justly described by one of his contemporaries 
as an inspired idiot, and by another as a 
being, 

" Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." 

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. 

4 6 ' 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

His blunders would not come in amiss among 
the stories of Hierocles. But these men at- 
tained literary eminence in spite of their 
weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason 
of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great 
fool, he would never have been a great writer. 
Without all the qualities which made him the 
jest and the torment of those among whom he 
lived — without the officiousness, the inquisi- 
tiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the 
insensibility to all reproof, he never could 
have produced so excellent a book. He was 
a slave, proud of his servitude : a Paul Pry, 
convinced that his own curiosity and garru- 
lity were virtues ; an unsafe companion, who 
never scrupled to repay the most liberal hos- 
pitality by the basest violation of confidence ; 
a man without delicacy, without shame, with- 
out sense enough to know when he was hurt- 
ing the feelings of others, or when he was ex- 
posing himself to derision ; and because he 
was all this, he has, in an important depart- 
ment of literature, immeasurably surpassed 
such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, 
and his own idol Johnson. 

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men 
to eminence as writers, he had absolutely 
none. There is not, in all his books, a single 
remark of his own on literature, politics, re- 

47 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

ligion, or society, which is not either common- 
place or absurd. His dissertations on heredi- 
tary gentility, on the slave trade, and on the 
entailing of landed estates, may serve as ex- 
amples. To say that these passages are 
sophistical, would be to pay them an extrava- 
gant compliment. They have no pretense to 
argument or even to meaning. He has re- 
ported innumerable observations made by 
himself in the course of conversation. Of 
those observations we do not remember one 
which is above the intellectual capacity of a 
boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his 
own letters, and in these letters he is always 
ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, 
taste, all those things which are generally 
considered as making a book valuable, were 
utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a 
quick observation and a retentive memory. 
These qualities, if he had been a man of sense 
and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have 
sufficed to make him conspicuous ; but, as 
he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, 
they have made him immortal. 

Those parts of his book which, considered 
abstractedly, are most utterly worthless, are 
delightful when we read them as illustrations 
of the character of the writer. Bad in them- 
selves, they are good dramatically, like the 

48 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

nonsense of Justice Shallow, the clipped 
English of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced con- 
sonants of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell 
is the most candid. Other men who have 
pretended to lay open their own hearts — 
Rousseau, for example, and Lord Byron — 
have evidently written with a constant view 
to effect, and are to be then most distrusted 
when they seem to be most sincere. There 
is scarcely any man who would not rather 
accuse himself of great crimes and of dark 
and tempestuous passions, than proclaim all 
his little vanities, and all his wild fancies. It 
would be easier to find a person who would 
avow actions like those of Caesar Borgia or 
Danton, than one who would publish a day- 
dream like those of Alnaschar and Malvolio. 
Those weaknesses which most men keep cov- 
ered up in the most secret places of the mind, 
not to be disclosed to the eye of friendship or 
of love, were precisely the weaknesses which 
Boswell paraded before all the world. He 
was perfectly frank, because the weakness of 
his understanding and the tumult of his spirit 
prevented him from knowing when he made 
himself ridiculous. His book resembles noth- 
ing so much as the conversation of the in- 
mates of the Palace of Truth. 

His fame is great, and it will, we have no 

4 49 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

doubt, be lasting ; but it is fame of a peculiar 
kind, and indeed marvelously resembles in- 
famy. We remember no other case in which 
the world has made so great a distinction 
between a book and its author. In general, 
the book and the author are considered as 
one. To admire the book is to admire the 
author. The case of Boswell is an exception, 
we think the only exception, to this rule. His 
work is universally allowed to be interesting, 
instructive, eminently original ; yet it has 
brought him nothing but contempt. All the 
world reads it, all the world delights in it; 
yet we do not remember ever to have read or 
even to have heard any expression of respect 
and admiration for the man to whom we owe 
so much instruction and amusement. While 
edition after edition of his book was coming 
forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells us, was 
ashamed of it, and hated to hear it mentioned. 
This feeling was natural and reasonable. 
Sir Alexander saw, that in proportion to the 
celebrity of the work was the degradation of 
the author. The very editors of this unfortu- 
nate gentleman's books have forgotten their 
allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists 
who took arms by the authority of the king 
against his person, have attacked the writer 
while doing homage to the writings. Mr. 

5° 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

Croker, for example, has published two thou- 
sand five hundred notes on the Life of John- 
son, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biog- 
rapher, whose performance he has taken such 
pains to illustrate, without some expression 
of contempt. 

An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was 
not. Yet the malignity of the most malignant 
satirist could scarcely cut deeper than his 
thoughtless loquacity. Having himself no 
sensibility to derision and contempt, he took 
it for granted that all others were equally 
callous. He was not ashamed to exhibit 
himself to the whole world as a common spy, 
a common tattler, a humble companion with- 
out the excuse of poverty, to tell a hundred 
stories of his own pertness and folly, and of 
the insults which his pertness and folly 
brought upon him. It was natural that he 
should show little discretion in cases in which 
the feelings or the honor of others might be 
concerned. No man, surely, ever published 
such stories respecting persons whom he pro- 
fessed to love and revere. He would infal- 
libly have made his hero as contemptible as 
he has made himself, had not this hero really 
possessed some moral and intellectual quali- 
ties of a very high order. The best proof 
that Johnson was really an extraordinary man, 

5* 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

is, that his character, instead of being degrad- 
ed, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised 
by a work in which all his vices and weak- 
nesses are exposed more unsparingly than 
they ever were exposed by Churchill or by 
Kenrick. 

His Character and Career 

Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness 
of his lame and in the enjoyment of a com- 
petent fortune, is better known to us than any 
other man in history. Everything about him, 
his coat, his wig, his figure, his face/his scro- 
fula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, 
his blinking eye, the outward signs which too 
clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, 
his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal- 
pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for 
tea, his trick of touching the posts as he 
walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring 
up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slum- 
bers, his midnight disputations, his contor- 
tions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puf- 
fings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, 
his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, 
his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, 
old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the 
cat Hodge and the negro Frank — all are as 

5 2 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

familiar to us as the objects by which we have 
been surrounded from childhood. But we 
have no minute information respecting those 
years of Johnson's life during which his char- 
acter and his manners became immutably 
fixed. We know him not as he was known 
to the men of his own generation, but as he 
was known to men whose father he might 
have been. That celebrated club of which 
he was the most distinguished member con- 
tained few persons who could remember a 
time when his fame was not fully established 
and his habits completely formed, He had 
made himself a name in literature while Rey- 
nolds and the Wartons were still boys. He 
was about twenty years older than Burke, 
Goldsmith, and Gerard Hamilton ; about 
thirty years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, 
and Langton ; and about forty years older 
than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and 
Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the 
two writers from whom we derive most of our 
knowledge respecting him, never saw him till 
long after he was fifty years old, till most of 
his great works had become classical, and 
till the pension bestowed on him by Lord Bute 
had placed him above poverty. Of those 
eminent men who were his most intimate as- 
sociates towards the close of his life, the only 

53 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

one, as far as we remember, who knew him 
during the first ten or twelve years of his resi- 
dence in the capital, was David Garrick ; and 
it does not appear that, during those years, 
David Garrick saw much of his fellow towns- 
man. 

Johnson came up to London precisely at 
the time when the condition of a man of letters 
was most miserable and degraded. It was a 
dark night between two sunny days. The 
age of Maecenases had passed away. The 
age of general curiosity and intelligence had 
not arrived. The number of readers is at 
present so great, that a popular author may 
subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits 
of his works. In the reigns of William the 
Third, of Anne, and of George the First, even 
such men as Congreve and Addison would 
scarcely have been able to live like gentlemen 
by the mere sale of their writings. But the 
deficiency of the natural demand lor literature 
was, at the close of the seventeenth and at 
the beginning of the eighteenth century, more 
than made up by artificial encouragement, by 
a vast system of bounties and premiums. 
There was, perhaps, never a time at which 
the rewards of literary merit were so splendid 
— at which men who could write well found 
such easy admittance into the most distin- 

54 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

guished society and to the highest honors of 
the state. The chiefs of both the great parties 
into which the kingdom was divided patron- 
ized literature with emulous munificence. 
Congreve, when he had scarcely attained his 
majority, was rewarded for his first comedy 
with places which made him independent for 
life. Smith, though his Hippolytus and 
Phcedra failed, would have been consoled 
with ^300 a year, but for his own folly. Rowe 
was not only poet-laureate, but land-surveyor 
of the customs in the port oi London, clerk of 
the council to the Prince of Wales, and secre- 
tary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancel- 
lor. Hughes was secretary to the Commis- 
sions of the Peace. Ambrose Phillips was 
judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland. 
Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and of 
the Board of Trade. Newton was master of 
the Mint. Stepney and Prior were employed 
in embassies of high dignity and importance. 
Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a 
silk-mercer, became a secretary of legation at 
five-and-twenty. It was to a poem on the 
death of Charles II., and to the City and Coun- 
try Mouse, that Montague owed his introduc- 
tion into public life, his earldom, his garter, 
and his auditorship of the Exchequer. Swift, 
but for the unconquerable prejudice of the 

55 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford, 
with his white staff in his hand, passed through 
the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, 
when that ingenious writer deserted the 
Whigs, Steele was a commissioner of stamps 
and a member of Parliament. Arthur Main- 
waring was a commissioner of the customs 
and auditor of the imprest. Tickell was secre- 
tary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison 
w r as secretary of state. 

This liberal patronage was brought into 
fashion, as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, 
who alone, of all the noble versifiers in the 
court of Charles the Second, possessed talents 
for composition which would have made him, 
eminent without the aid of a coronet. Mon- 
tague owed his elevation to the favor of Dorset, 
and imitated through the whole course of his 
life, the liberality to which he was himself so 
greatly indebted, The Tory leaders, Harley 
and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the 
chiefs of the Whig party in zeal for the en- 
couragement of letters. But soon after the 
accession of the house of Hanover a change 
took place. The supreme power passed to a 
man who cared little for poetry or eloquence. 
The importance of the House of Commons 
was constantly on the increase. The govern- 
ment was under the necessity of bartering, 

56 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

for parliamentary support, much of that pa- 
tronage which had been employed in fostering; 
literary merit ; and Walpole was by no means- 
inclined to divert any part of the fund of cor- - 
ruption to purposes which he considered as- 
idle. He had eminent talents for government 
and for debate ; but he had paid little atten- 
tion to books, and felt little respect for authors. 
One of the coarse jokes of his friend, Sir 
Charles Hanbury Williams, was far more, 
pleasing to him than Thomson's Seasons or 
Richardson's Pamela. He had observed that 
some of the distinguished writers whom the: 
favor of Halifax had turned into statesmen*, 
had been mere encumbrances to their party,, 
dawdlers in office, and mutes in Parliament. 
During the whole course of his administration, 
therefore, he scarcely patronized a single man 
of genius. The best writers of the age gave 
all their support to the opposition, and contri- 
buted to excite that discontent which, after 
plunging the nation into a foolish and unjust 
war, overthrew the minister to make room 
for men less able and equally unscrupulous. 
The opposition could reward its eulogists 
with little more than promises and caresses. 
St. James would give nothing, Leicester-house 
had nothing to give. 

Thus at the time when Johnson commenced 
57 i 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

r 'his literary career, a writer had little to hope 
from the patronage of powerful individuals. 
The patronage of the public did not yet fur- 
nish the means of comfortable subsistence. 

~The prices paid by booksellers to authors 
were so low, that a man of considerable talents 
and unremitting industry could do little more 
than provide for the day which was passing 
over him. The lean kine had eaten up the 
fat kine. The thin and withered ears had 
devoured the good ears. The season of rich 
harvest was over, and the period of famine 
had begun. All that is squalid and miserable 
might now be summed up in the one word — ■ 
Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed 
like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and 
spunging-houses, and perfectly qualified to 
decide on the comparative merits of the Com- 
mon Side in the King's Bench prison, and of 
Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the 
poorest pitied him ; and they well might pity 
him. For if their condition was equally ab- 
ject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor 
their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge 
in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a 
cellar amongst footmen out of place ; to tran- 
slate ten hours a day for the wages of a 
ditcher ; to be hunted by bailiffs from one 
haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, 

58 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

from Grub street to St. George's Fields, and 
from St. George's Fields to the alleys behind 
St. Martin's church ; to sleep on a bulk in 
June, and amidst the ashes of a glasshouse in 
December, to die in an hospital, and to be 
buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more 
than one writer, who, if he had lived thirty 
years earlier, would have been admitted to 
the sittings of the Kit-Cat or the Scriblerus 
Club, would have sat in the Parliament, and 
would have been intrusted with embassies to 
the High Allies ; who, if he had lived in our 
time, would have received from the book- 
sellers several hundred pounds a year. 

As every climate has its peculiar diseases, 
so every walk of life has its peculiar tempta- 
tions. The literary character, assuredly, has 
always had its share of faults — vanity, jeal- 
ousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults 
were now superadded all the laults which are 
commonly found in men whose livelihood is 
precarious, and whose principles are exposed 
to the trial of severe distress. All the vices 
of the gambler and of the beggar were blended 
with those of the author. The prizes in the 
wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely 
less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune 
came it came in such a manner that it was 
almost certain to be abused. After months 

59 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

of starvation and despair, a full third night, 
or a well-received dedication, filled the pocket 
of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with 
guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries 
with the images of which his mind had been 
haunted while sleeping amidst the cinders, 
and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in 
Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified 
him for another year of night cellars. Such 
was the life of Savage, of Boyce, and of a 
crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold- 
laced hats and waistcoats, sometimes lying in 
bed because their coats had gone to pieces, 
or wearing paper cravats because their linen 
was in pawn ; sometimes drinking Champagne 
and Tokay with Betty Careless ; sometimes 
standing at the window of an eating-house in 
Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what 
they could not afford to taste ; they knew lux- 
ury ; they knew beggary ; but they never 
knew comfort, These men were irreclaim- 
able. They looked on a regular and frugal 
life with the same aversion which an old gipsy 
or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary 
abode, and for the restraints and securities 
of civilized communities. They were as un- 
tameable, as much wedded to their desolate 
freedom, 'as the wild ass. They could no 
more be broken in to the offices of social man 
60 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

than the unicorn could be trained to serve 
and abide by the crib. It was well, if they 
did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear 
the hands which ministered to their necessities. 
To assist them was impossible ; and the most 
benevolent of mankind at length became 
weary of giving relief, which was dissipated 
with the wildest profusion as soon as it had 
been received. If a sum was bestowed on 
the wretched adventurer, such as, properly 
husbanded, might have supplied him for six 
months, it was instantly spent in strange 
freaks of sensuality, and before forty-eight 
hours had elapsed, the poet was again pester- 
ing all his acquaintances for twopence to get 
a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous 
cook-shop. If his friends gave him an asylum 
in their houses, those houses were forthwith 
turned into bagnios and taverns. All order 
was destroyed, all business was suspended. 
The most good-natured host began to repent 
of his eagerness to serve a man of genius in 
distress, when he heard his guest roaring for 
fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning. 

A tew eminent writers were more fortunate. 
Pope had been raised above poverty by the 
active patronage which, in his youth, both the 
great political parties had extended to his 
Homer. Young had received the only pension 
61 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

ever bestowed, to the best of our recollection, 
by Sir Robert Walpole, as the reward of mere 
literary merit. One or two of the many poets 
who attached themselves to the opposition, 
Thomson in particular, and Mallet, obtained, 
after much severe suffering, the means of sub- 
sistence from their political friends. Rich- 
ardson, like a man of sense, kept his shop, 
and his shop kept him, which his novels, ad- 
mirable as they are, would scarcely have done. 
But nothing could be more deplorable than 
the state even of the ablest men, who at that 
time depended for subsistence on their writ- 
ings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thom- 
son were certainly four of the most distin- 
guished persons that England produced during 
the eighteenth century. It is well known that 
they were all four arrested for debt. 

Into calamities and difficulties such as these 
Johnson plunged in his twenty-eighth year. 
From that time, till he was three or four-and- 
fifty, we have little information respecting 
him ; — little, we mean, compared with the 
full and accurate information which we pos- 
sess respecting his proceedings and habits 
towards the close of his life. He emerged at 
length from cocklofts and sixpenny ordinaries 
into the society of the polished and the opu- 
lent. His fame was established. A pension 
62 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

sufficient for his wants had been conferred on 
him ; and he came forth to astonish a gener- 
ation with which he had almost as little in 
common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards. 

In his early years he had occasionally seen 
the great ; but he had seen them as a beggar. 
He now came among them as a companion. 
The demand for amusement and instruction 
had, during the course ot twenty years, been 
gradually increasing. The price of literary 
labors had risen ; and those rising men of 
letters, with whom Johnson was henceforth 
to associate, were for the most part persons 
widely different from those who had walked 
about with him all night in the streets, for 
want of a lodging. Burke, Robertson, the 
Wartons, Gray, Mason, Gibbon, Adam Smith, 
Beattie, Sir William Jones, Goldsmith, and 
Churchill were the most distinguished writers 
of what may be called the second generation 
of the Johnsonian age. Of these men, Church- 
ill was the only one in whom we can trace 
the stronger lineaments of that character, 
which, when Johnson first came up to Lon- 
don, was common among authors. Of the 
rest, scarcely any had felt the pressure of 
severe poverty. All had been early admitted 
into the most respectable society on an equal 
footing. They were men of quite a different 

6 3 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

species from the dependants of Curll and Os- 
borne. 

Johnson came among them the solitary 
specimen of a past age — the last survivor of a 
genuine race oi Grub-street hacks ; the last 
of that generation of authors whose abject 
misery and whose dissolute manners had 
furnished inexhaustible matter to the satirical 
genius of Pope. From nature, he had re- 
ceived an uncouth figure, a diseased consti- 
tution, and an irritable temper. The manner 
in which the earlier years of his manhood had 
been passed, had given to his demeanor, and 
even to his moral character^ some peculiar- 
ities, appalling to the civilized beings who 
were the companions of his old age. The 
perverse irregularity of his hours, the sloven- 
liness of his person, his fits of strenuous ex- 
ertion, interrupted by long intervals of slug- 
gishness ; his strange abstinence, and his 
equally strange voracity ; his active benevo- 
lence, contrasted with the constant rudeness 
and the occasional ferocity of his manners in 
society, made him, in the opinion of those 
with whom he lived during the last twenty 
years of his life, a complete original. An 
original he was, undoubtedly, in some re- 
spects. But if we possessed full information 
concerning those who shared his early hard- 

6 4 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

ships, we should probably find, that what we 
call his singularities of manner, were, for the 
most part, failings which he had in common 
with the class to which he belonged. He ate 
at Streatham Park as he had been used to 
eat behind the screen at St. John's Gate, when 
he was ashamed to show his ragged clothes. 
He ate as it was natural that a man should 
eat who, during a great part of his life, had 
passed the morning in doubt whether he 
should have food for the afternoon. The 
habits of his early life had accustomed him to 
bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste 
pleasure with moderation. He could fast; 
but when he did not fast he tore his dinner 
like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling 
on his forehead, and the perspiration running 
down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. 
But when he drank it, he drank it greedily, 
and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, 
mitigated symptoms of that same moral dis- 
ease, which raged with such deadly malignity 
in his friends Savage and Boyce. The rough- 
ness and violence which he showed in society 
were to be expected from a man whose tem- 
per, not naturally gentle, had been long tried 
by the bitterest calamities — by the want of 
meat, of fire, and of clothes ; by the impor- 
tunity of creditors, by the insolence of book- 
t 6 5 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

sellers, by the derision of fools, by the insin- 
cerity of patrons, by that bread which is the 
bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are 
the most toilsome of all paths, by that de- 
ferred hope which makes the heart sick. 
Through all these things the ill-dressed, 
coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled man- 
fully up to eminence and command. It was- 
natural, that, in the exercise of his power, he 
should be " eo immitior, quia toleraverat " — 
that though his heart was undoubtedly gener- 
ous and humane, his demeanor in society- 
should be harsh and despotic. For severe 
distress he had sympathy, and not only sym- 
pathy, but munificent relief. But for the suf- 
fering which a harsh word inflicts upon a 
delicate mind, he had no pity ; for it was a 
kind of suffering which he could scarcely con- 
ceive. He would carry home on his shoulders 
a sick and starving girl from the streets. He 
turned his house into a place of refuge for a 
crowd of wretched old creatures who could 
find no other asylum ; nor could all their 
peevishness and ingratitude weary out his- 
benevolence. But the pangs of wounded 
vanity seemed to him ridiculous ; and he 
scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for 
the pangs of wounded affection. He had 
seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that 
66 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

he was not affected by paltry vexations ; and 
he seemed to think that everybody ought to 
be as much hardened to those vexations as 
himself. He was angry with Boswell for 
complaining of a headache ; with Mrs. Thrale 
for grumbling about the dust on the road, or 
the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his 
phrase, " foppish lamentations," which people 
ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so 
full of misery. Goldsmith crying because the 
Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him 
with no pity. Though his own health was 
not good, he detested and despised valetudi- 
narians. Even great pecuniary losses, unless 
they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, 
moved him very little. People whose hearts 
had been softened by prosperity might cry, 
he said, for such events ; but all that could 
be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. 
A person who troubled himself so little 
about the smaller grievances of human life, 
was not likely to be very attentive to the feel- 
ings of others in the ordinary intercourse of 
society. He could not understand how a 
sarcasm or a reprimand could make any man 
really unhappy. " My dear doctor," said he 
to Goldsmith, " what harm does it do to a 
man to call him Holofernes ? " " Poh, ma'am," 
he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, " who is the 

6 7 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

worse for being talked of uncharitably ? " 
Politeness has been well defined as benevo- 
lence in small things. Johnson was impolite, 
not because he wanted benevolence, but be- 
cause small things appeared smaller to him 
than to people who had never known what it 
was to live for lour-pence half-penny a day. 

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect 
was the union of great powers with low prej- 
udices. If we judged of him by the best 
parts of his mind, we should place him almost 
as high as he was placed by the idolatry of 
of Boswell ; if by the worst parts of his 
mind, we should place him even below Bos- 
well himself. Where he was not under the 
influence of some strange scruple, or some 
domineering passion, which prevented him 
from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, 
he was a wary and accurate reasoner, a little 
too much inclined to skepticism, and a little 
too fond of paradox. No man was less likely 
to be imposed upon by fallacies in argument, 
or by exaggerated statements of fact. But, 
if, while he was beating down sophisms, and 
exposing false testimony, some childish prej- 
udices, such as would excite laughter in a 
well-managed nursery, came across him, he 
was smitten as if by enchantment. His mind 
dwindled away under the spell from gigantic 
6S 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who 
had lately been admiring its amplitude and 
its force, were now as much astonished at 
its strange narrowness and feebleness, as the 
fisherman, in the Arabian tale, when he saw 
the genie, whose stature had overshadowed 
the whole seacoast, and whose might seemed 
equal to a contest with armies, contract him- 
self to the dimensions of his small prison, and 
lie there the helpless slave of the charm of 
Solomon. 

Johnson was in the habit of sifting with ex- 
treme severity the evidence for all stories 
which were merely odd. But when they were 
not only odd but miraculous, his severity re- 
laxed. He began to be credujous precisely 
at the point where the more credulous people 
begin to be skeptical. It is curious to observe, 
both in his writings and in his conversation, 
the contrast between the disdainful manner 
in which he rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, 
even when they are consistent with the gen- 
eral laws oT nature, and the respectful manner 
in which he mentions the wildest stories re- 
lating to the invisible world. A man who 
told him of a waterspout or a meteoric stone 
generally had the lie direct given him for his 
pains. A man who told him of a prediction 
or a dream wonderfully accomplished, was 

6 9 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

sure of a courteous hearing. "Johnson/* 
observes Hogarth, " like King David, says 
in his haste that all men are liars." t( His 
incredulity," says Mrs. Thrale, " amounted 
almost to disease." She tells us how he 
browbeat a gentleman, who gave him an ac- 
count of a hurricane in the West Indies, and 
a poor Quaker, who related some strange 
circumstance about the red-hot balls fired 
at the siege of Gibraltar. " It is not so. It 
cannot be true. Don't tell that story again. 
You cannot think how poor a figure you make 
in telling it." He once said, half jestingly 
we suppose, that for six months he refused to 
credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, 
and that he still believed the extent of the ca- 
lamity to be greatly exaggerated. Yet he re- 
lated with a grave face how old Mr. Cave of 
St. John s Gate saw a ghost, and how this 
ghost was something of a shadowy being. 
He went himself on a ghost-hunt to Cocklane, 
and was angry with John Wesley for not fol- 
lowing up another scent of the same kind 
with proper spirit and perseverance. He 
rejects the Celtic genealogies and poems 
without the least hesitation ; yet he declares 
himself willing to believe the stories of the 
second sight. If he had examined the claims 
of the Highland seers with half the severity 
70 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

with which he sifted the evidence for the gen* 
uineness of Fingal, he would, we suspect, have 
come away from Scotland with a mind fully 
made up. In his Lives of the Poets, we find 
that he is unwilling to give credit to the ac- 
counts of Lord Roscommon's early profi- 
ciency in his studies ; but he tells with great 
solemnity an absurd romance about some in- 
telligence preternaturally impressed on the 
mind of that nobleman. He avows himself 
to be in great doubt about the truth of the 
story, and ends by warning his readers not 
wholly to slight such impressions. 

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects 
are worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. 
He could discern clearly enough the folly and 
meanness of all bigotry except his own. When 
he spoke of the scruples of the Puritans, 
he spoke like a person who had really obtain- 
ed an insight into the divine philosophy of the 
New Testament, and who considered Chris- 
tianity as a noble scheme of government, tend- 
ing to promote the happiness and to elevate 
the moral nature of man. The horror which 
the sectaries felt for cards, Christmas ale, 
plum-porridge, mince-pies, and dancing bears, 
excited his contempt. To the arguments urged 
by some very worthy people against showy 
dress, he replied with admirable sense and 

7i 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

spirit, " Let us not be found, when our Master 
calls us, stripping the lace off our waistcoats, 
but the spirit of contention from our souls and 
tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get 
to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way 
thither the sooner in a gray one." Yet he 
was himself under the tyranny of scruples as 
unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho ; 
and carried his zeal for ceremonies and for 
ecclesiastical dignities to lengths altogether 
inconsistent with reason, or with Christian 
charity. He has gravely noted down in his 
diary, that he once committed the sin of 
drinking coffee on Good Friday. In Scotland, 
he thought it his duty to pass several months 
without joining in public worship, solely be- 
cause the ministers of the kirk had not been 
ordained by bishops. His mode of estimat- 
ing the piety of his neighbors was somewhat 
singular. "Campbell," said he, "is a good 
man — a pious man. I am afraid he has not 
been in the inside of a church for many years ; 
but he never passes a church without pulling 
off his hat ; this shows he has good principles." 
Spain and Sicily must surely contain many 
pious robbers and well-principled assassins. 
Johnson could easily see that a Roundhead, 
who named all his children after Solomon's 
singers, and talked in the House of Commons 
72 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

about seeking the Lord, might be an unprin- ? 
cipled villain, whose religious mummeries, 
only aggravated his guilt. But a man who 
took off his hat when he passed a church 
episcopally consecrated, must be a good man,; 
a pious man, a man of good principles. 
Johnson could easily see that those persons 
who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat, 
as sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attri- 
butes of God, and of the ends of revelation. 
But with what a storm of invective he would 
have overwhelmed any man who had blamed, 
him for celebrating the close of Lent with 
sugarless tea and butterless buns ! 

Nobody spoke more contemptuously of the 
cant of patriotism. Nobody saw more clearly 
the error of those who represented liberty, 
not as a means, but as an end ; and who pro- 
posed to themselves, as the object of their 
pursuit, the prosperity of the state as distinct 
from the prosperity of the individuals who 
compose the state. His calm and settled 
opinion seems to have been that forms of 
government have little or no influence on the 
happiness of society. This opinion, erroneous 
as it is, ought at least to have preserved him 
from all intemperance on political questions. 
It did not, however, preserve him from the 
lowest, fiercest, and most absurd extrava- 

73 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

gance of party spirit — from rants which, in 
everything but the diction, resembled those of 
Squire Western. He was, as a politician, 
half ice and half fire — on the side of his intel- 
lect a mere Pococurante — far too apathetic 
about public affairs — far too skeptical as to 
the good or evil tendency of any form of 
polity. His passions, on the contrary, were 
violent even to slaying against all who leaned 
to Whiggish principles. The well-known lines 
which he inserted in Goldsmith's Traveller 
express what seems to have been his deliber- 
ate judgment : — 

" How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure." 

He had previously put expressions very 
-similar into the mouth of Rasselas. It is 
.amusing to contrast these passages with the 
torrents of raving abuse which he poured 
forth against the Long Parliament and the 
American Congress. In one of the conversa- 
tions reported by Boswell, this strange in- 
consistency displays itself in the most ludi- 
crous manner. 

"Sir Adam Ferguson," says Boswell, "suggested that 
luxury corrupts a people and destroys the spirit of liberty." — 
Johnson. " Sir, that is all visionary. I would not give half 
■a guinea to live under one form of government rather than an- 
other. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. 

74 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private 
man. What Frenchman is prevented from passing his life as 
he pleases? " — Sir Adam. " But, sir, in the British constitu- 
tion it is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, 
so as to preserve a balance against the crown." — Johnson. 
" Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish 
jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown has not power 
enough. " 

One of the old philosophers, Lord Bacon 
tells us, used to say that life and death were 
just the same to him. "Why, then," said an 
objector, " do you not kill yourself?" The 
philosopher answered, " Because it is just the 
same." If the difference between two forms 
of government be not worth half a guinea, it 
is not easy to see how Whiggism can be viler 
than Toryism, or how the crown can have 
too little power. If private men suffer noth- 
ing from political abuses, zeal for liberty is 
doubtless ridiculous. But zeal for monarchy 
must be equally so. No person would have 
been more quick-sighted than Johnson to such 
a contradiction as this in the logic of an antag- 
onist. 

The judgments which Johnson passed on 
books were in his own time regarded with 
superstitious veneration ; and in our time 
are generally treated with indiscriminate con- 
tempt. They are the judgments of a strong 
but enslaved understanding. The mind ot 

75 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

the critic was hedged round by an uninter- 
rupted fence of prejudices and superstitions. 
Within his narrow limits he displayed a vigor 
and an activity which ought to have enabled 
him to clear the barrier that confined him. 

How it chanced that a man who reasoned 
on his premises so ably should assume his 
premises so foolishly, is one of the great mys- 
teries of human nature. The same inconsis- 
tency may be observed in the schoolmen of 
the middle ages. Those writers show so 
much acuteness and force of mind in arguing 
on their wretched data, that a modern reader 
is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how 
such minds came by such data. Not a flaw 
in the superstructure of the theory which they 
are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they 
are blind to the obvious unsoundness of the 
foundation. It is the same with some eminent 
lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellec- 
tual prodigies, abounding with the happiest 
analogies and the most refined distinctions. 
The principles of their arbitrary science being 
once admitted, the statute-book and the re- 
ports being once assumed as the foundations 
of jurisprudence, these men must be allowed 
to be perfect masters of logic. But if a ques- 
tion arises as to the postulates on which their 
whole system rests, if they are called upon to 

7 6 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

vindicate the fundamental maxims of that sys-, 
tern which they have passed their lives in 
studying, these very men often talk the lan- 
guage of savages or of children. Those who 
have listened to a man, of this class in his 
own court, and who have witnessed the skill 
with which he analyzes and digests a vast 
mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of 
precedents which at first sight seem contra- 
dictory, scarcely know him again when, a 
few hours later, they hear him speaking on 
the other side of Westminster Hall in his 
capacity of legislator. They can scarcely be- 
lieve that the paltry quirks which are faintly 
heard through a storm of coughing, and 
which cannot impose on the plainest country 
gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp 
and vigorous intellect which had excited their 
admiration under the same roof and on the 
same day. 

Johnson decided literary questions like a 
lawyer, not like a legislator. He never ex- 
amined foundations where a point was already 
ruled. His whole code of criticism rested on 
pure assumption, for which he sometimes 
gave a precedent or an authority, but rarely 
troubled himself to give a reason drawn from 
the nature of things. He took it for granted 
that the kind of poetry which flourished in his 

77 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

own time, which he had been accustomed to 
hear praised from his childhood, and which 
he had himself written with success, was the 
best kind of poetry. In his biographical work 
he has repeatedly laid it down as an undeni- 
able proposition that, during the latter part 
of the seventeenth century and the earlier 
part of the eighteenth, English poetry had 
been in a constant progress of improvement. 
Waller, Denham, Dryden, and Pope had been, 
according to him, the great reformers. He 
judged of all works of the imagination by the 
standard established among his own contem- 
poraries, Though he allowed Homer to have 
been a greater man than Virgil, he seems to 
have thought the ^Eneid a greater poem than 
the Iliad. Indeed he well might have thought 
so, for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. 
He pronounced that, after Hoole's translation 
of Tasso, Fairfax's would hardly be reprinted. 
He could see no merit in our fine old English 
ballads, and always spoke with the most pro- 
voking contempt of Percy's fondness for them. 
Of all the great original works which appear- 
ed during his time Richardson's novels alone 
excited his admiration. He could see little 
or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver's Trav- 
els, or in Tristram Shandy. To Thomson's 
Gastle of Indolence he vouchsafed only a line 

78 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

of cold commendation — of commendation 
much colder than what he has bestowed on 
the Creation of that portentous bore, Sir Rich- 
ard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a 
barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. 
The contempt which he felt for the trash of 
Macpherson was indeed just ; but it was, we 
suspect, just by chance. He despised the 
Fingal for the very reason which led many 
men of genius to admire it. He despised it, 
not because it was essentially commonplace, 
but because it had a superficial air of origin- 
ality. 

He was undoubtedly an excellent judge of 
compositions fashioned on his own principles. 
But when a deeper philosophy was required — 
when he undertook to pronounce judgment on 
the works of those great minds which "yield 
homage only to eternal laws" — his failure was 
ignominious. He criticised Pope's Epitaphs 
excellently. But his observations on Shak- 
speare's plays and Milton's poems seem to us 
as wretched as if they had been written by 
Rymer himself, whom we take to have been 
the worst critic that ever lived. 

Some of Johnson's whims on literary sub- 
jects can be compared only to that strange, 
nervous feeling which made him uneasy if he 
had not touched every post between the 

79 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

Mitre tavern and his own lodgings. His pref- 
erences of Latin epitaphs to English epitaphs 
is an instance. An English epitaph, he said, 
would disgrace Smollett. He declared that 
he would not pollute the walls of Westmin- 
ster Abbey with an English epitaph on Gold- 
smith. What reason there can be for cele- 
brating a British writer in Latin which there 
was not for covering the Roman arches of 
triumph with Greek inscriptions, or for com- 
memorating the deed of the heroes of Ther- 
mopylae in Egyptian hieroglyphics, we are 
utterly unable to imagine. 

On men and manners — at least, on the men 
and manners of a particular place and a par- 
ticular age — Johnson had certainly looked 
with a most observant and discriminating eye. 
His remarks on the education of children, on 
marriage, on the economy of families, on the 
rules of society, are always striking, and gen- 
erally sound. In his writings, indeed, the 
knowledge of life which he possessed in an 
eminent degree is very imperfectly exhibited. 
Like those unfortunate chiefs of the middle 
ages, who were suffocated by their own chain- 
mail and cloth of gold, his maxims perish 
under that load of words, which was designed 
for their ornament and their defence. But 
it is clear, from the remains of his conversa- 
80 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

tion, that he had more of that homely wisdom 
which nothing but experience and observa- 
tion can give, than any writer since the time 
of Swift. If he had been content to write as 
he talked, he might have left books on the 
practical art of living superior to the Direc- 
tions to Servants. 

Yet even his remarks on society, like his 
remarks on literature, indicate a mind at least 
as remarkable for narrowness as for strength. 
He was no master of the great science of 
human nature. He had studied, not the 
genus man, but the species Londoner. No- 
body was ever so thoroughly conversant with 
all the forms of life, and all the shades of mo- 
ral and intellectual character, which were to 
be seen from Islington to the Thames, and 
from Hyde-Park corner to Mile-end green. 
But his philosophy stopped at the first turn- 
pike gate. Of the rural life of England he 
knew nothing ; and he took it for granted 
that everybody who lived in the country was 
either stupid or miserable. " Country gen- 
tlemen," said he, " must be unhappy ; for they 
have not enough to keep their lives in mo- 
tion." As if all those peculiar habits and 
associations, which made Fleet Street and 
Charing Cross the finest views in the world 
to himself, had been essential parts of human 
6 81 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

nature. Of remote countries and past times 
he talked wiih wild and ignorant presump- 
tion. " The Athenians of the age of Demos- 
thenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, " were a 
people of brutes, a barbarous people." In 
conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson he used 
similar language. " The boasted Athen- 
ians," he said, " were barbarians. The mass 
of every people must be barbarous, where 
there is no printing." The fact was this : he 
saw that a Londoner who could not read was 
a very stupid and brutal fellow : he saw that 
great refinement of taste and activity of in- 
tellect were rarely found in a Londoner who 
had not read much ; and because it was by 
means of books that people acquired almost 
all their knowledge in the society with which 
he was acquainted, he concluded, in defiance 
of the strongest and clearest evidence, that 
the human mind can be cultivated by means 
of books alone. An Athenian citizen might 
possess very few volumes ; and even the larg- 
est library to which he had access might be 
much less valuable than Johnson's bookcase 
in Bolt Court. But the Athenian might pass 
every morning in conversation with Socrates, 
and might hear Pericles speak four or five 
times every month. He saw the plays of 
Sophocles and Aristophanes ; he walked 
82 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paint- 
ings of Zeuxis ; he knew by heart the choruses 
of i^schylus ; he heard the rhapsodist at the 
corner of the street reciting the Shield of 
Achilles, or the Death of Argus ; he was a 
legislator conversant with high questions of 
alliance, revenue, and war ; he was a soldier, 
trained under a liberal and generous disci- 
pline ; he was a judge, compelled every day 
to weigh the effect of opposite arguments. 
These things were in themselves an educa- 
tion ; an education eminently fitted, not in- 
deed to form exact or profound thinkers, but 
to give quickness to the perceptions, delicacy 
to the taste, fluency to the expression, and 
politeness to the manners. But this John- 
son never considered, An Athenian who 
did not improve his mind by reading, was, 
in his opinion, much such a person as a Cock- 
ney who made his mark; much such a person 
as black Frank before he went to school, 
and far inferior to a parish-clerk or a 
printer's devil. 

His friends have allowed that he carried to 
a ridiculous extreme his unjust contempt for 
foreigners. He pronounced the French to be 
a very silly people — much behind us — stupid, 
ignorant creatures. And this judgment he 
formed after having been at Paris about a 

83 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

month, during which he would not talk French, 
for fear of giving the natives an advantage 
over him in conversation. He pronounced 
them, also, to be an indelicate people, because 
a French footman touched the sugar with his 
fingers. That ingenious and amusing trav- 
eler, M. Simond, has defended his countrymen 
very successfully against Johnson's accusation, 
and has pointed out some English practices, 
which, to an impartial spectator, would seem 
at least as inconsistent with physical cleanli- 
ness and social decorum as those which John- 
son so bitterly reprehended. To the sage, as 
Boswell loves to call him, it never occurred 
to doubt that there must be something eter- 
nally and immutably good in the usages to 
which he had been accustomed. In fact, 
Johnson's remarks on society beyond the bills 
of mortality, are generally of much the same 
kind with those of honest Tom Dawson, the 
English footman of Dr. Moore's Zeluco. 
" Suppose the King of France has no sons, 
but only a daughter, then, when the king 
dies, this here daughter, according to that 
there law, cannot be made queen, but the 
next near relative, provided he is a man, is 
made king, and not the last king's daugh- 
ter, which, to be sure, is very unjust. The 
French footguards are dressed in blue, and 

8 4 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

all the marching regiments in white, which 
has a very foolish appearance for soldiers ; 
and as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for 
the blue horse or the artillery." 

Johnson's visit to the Hebrides introduced 
him to a state of society completely new to him : 
and a salutary suspicion of his own deficiencies 
seems on that occasion to have crossed his 
mind for the first time. He confessed, in the 
last paragraph of his Journey, that his thoughts 
on national manners were the thoughts of 
one who had seen but little ; of one who had 
passed his time almost wholly in cities. This 
feeling, however, soon passed away. It is 
remarkable, that to the last he entertained a 
fixed contempt for all those modes of life and 
those studies, which lead to emancipate the 
mind from the prejudices of a particular age 
or a particular nation. Of foreign travel and 
of history he spoke with the fierce and boister- 
ous contempt of ignorance. " What does a 
man learn by traveling ? Is Beauclerk 
the better for traveling ? What did Lord 
Charlemont learn in his travels, except that 
there was a snake in one of the pyramids of 
Egypt ? " History was, in his opinion, to use 
the fine expression of Lord Plunkett, an old 
almanac : historians could, as he conceived, 
claim no higher dignity than that of almanac- 

85 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

makers ; and his favorite historians were 
those who, like Lord Hailes, aspired to no 
higher dignity. He always spoke with con- 
tempt of Robertson. Hume he would not 
even read. He affronted one of his friends 
for talking to him about Catiline's conspiracy, 
and declared that he never desired to hear of 
the Punic War again as long as he lived. 

Assuredly one fact, which does not directly 
affect our own interests, considered in itself, 
is no better worth knowing than another fact. 
The fact that there is a snake in a pyramid, or 
the fact that Hannibal crossed the Alps by the 
Great St. Bernard, are in themselves as un- 
profitable to us as the fact that there is a 
green blind in a particular house in Thread- 
needle street, or the fact that a Mr. Smith 
comes into the city every morning on the top 
of one of the Blackwall stages. But it is cer- 
tain that those who will not crack the shell of 
history will never get at the kernel. Johnson, 
with hasty arrogance, pronounced the kernel 
worthless, because he saw no value in the shell. 
The real use of traveling to distant countries, 
and of studying the annals of past times, is to 
preserve men from the contraction of mind 
which those can hardly escape, whose whole 
communion is with one generation and one 
neighborhood, who arrive at conclusions by 
86 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

means of an induction not sufficiently copious, 
and who therefore constantly confound excep- 
tions with rules, and accidents with essential 
properties. In short, the real use of travel- 
ing, and of studying history, is to keep men 
from being what Tom Dawson was in fiction, 
and Samuel Johnson in reality. 

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, 
appears far greater in Boswell's books than 
in his own. His conversation appears to have 
been quite equal to his writings in matter, and 
far superior to them in manner. When he 
talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forci- 
ble and natural expressions. As soon as he 
took his pen in his hand to write for the public, 
his style became systematically vicious. All 
his books are written in a learned language — 
in a language which nobody hears from his 
mother or his nurse — in a language in which 
nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or 
makes love — in a language in which nobody 
ever thinks. It is clear, that Johnson himself 
did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. 
The expressions which came first to his tongue 
were simple, energetic, and picturesque. 
When he wrote for publication, he did his 
sentences out of English into Johnsonese. 
His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale 
are the original of that work of which the 

87 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

Journey to the Hebrides as the translation ; 
and it is amusing to compare the two versions. 
t( When we were taken upstairs," says he in 
one of his letters, " a dirty fellow bounced out 
of the bed on which one of us was to lie," 
This incident is recorded in the Journey as 
follows: "Out of one of the beds on which 
we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, 
a man black as a Cyclops from the forge," 
Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. " The 
Rehearsal," he said, very unjiustly, "has not 
wit enough to keep it sweet ; " then, after a 
pause, " it has not vitality enough to preserve 
it from putrefaction." 

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes 
even agreeable, when the manner, though 
vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, 
would be willing to part with the mannerism 
of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism 
which does not sit easy on the mannerist, 
which has been adopted on principle, and 
which can be sustained only by constant effort, 
is always offensive. And such is the manner- 
ism of Johnson. 

The characteristic faults of his style are so 
familiar to all our readers, and have been so 
often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous 
to point them out. It is well known that he 
made less use than any other eminent writer 
88 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

of those strong plain words, Anglo-Saxon or 
Norman French, of which the roots lie in the 
inmost depths of our language ; and that he 
felt a vicious partiality for terms which, long 
after our own speech had been fixed, were 
borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and 
which, therefore, even when lawfully natur- 
alized, must be considered as born aliens, not 
entitled to rank with the king's English. His 
constant practice of padding out a sentence 
with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as 
the bust of an exquisite ; his antithetical forms 
of expression, constantly employed even where 
there is no opposition in the ideas expressed ; 
his big words wasted on little things ; his 
harsh inversions, so widely different from 
those graceful and easy inversions which give 
variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expres- 
sion of our great old writers — all these pecul- 
iarities have been imitated by his admirers 
and parodied by his assailants, till the public 
has become sick of the subject. 

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very 
justly, " If you were to write a fable about 
little fishes, doctor, you would make the little 
fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever 
had so little talent for personation as Johnson. 

Whether he wrote in the character of a dis- 
appointed legacy-hunter or an empty town 

8 9 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, 
he wrote in the same pompous and unbend- 
ing style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shaf- 
ton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him 
under every disguise. Euphelia and Rho- 
doclia talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or 
Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay 
Cornelia describes her reception at the coun- 
try-house of her relations in such terms as 
these : " I was surprised, after the civilities of 
my first reception, to find, instead of the 
leisure and tranquillity which a rural life 
always promises, and, if well conducted, might 
always afford, a confused wildness of care, 
and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which 
every face was clouded, and every motion 
agitated." The gentle Tranquilla informs 
us, that she " had not passed the early part 
of life without the flattery of courtship and 
the joys of triumph ; but had danced the round 
of gayety amidst the murmurs of envy and the 
gratulations of applause ; had been attended 
from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the 
sprightly, and the vain ; and had seen her re- 
gard solicited by the obsequiousness of gal- 
lantry, the gayety of wit, and the timidity of 
love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not 
wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The 
reader may well cry out with honest Sir Hugh 
90 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

Evans, " I like not when a 'oman has a great 
peard : I spy a great peard under her muffler." 
We had something more to say. But our 
article is already too long ; and we must 
close it. We would fain part in good humor 
from the hero, from the biographer, and even 
from the editor, who, ill as he has performed 
his task, has at least this claim to our grati- 
tude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's 
book again. As we close it, the club-room is 
before us, and the table on which stands the 
omelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. 
There are assembled those heads which live 
forever on the canvas of Reynolds. There 
are the spectacles of Burke and the tall thin 
form of Langton ; the courtly sneer of Beau- 
clerk and the beaming smile of Garrick ; 
Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua 
with his trumpet in his ear. In the fore- 
ground is that strange figure which is as 
familiar to us as the figures of those among 
whom we have been brought up — the gigantic 
body, the huge massy face, seamed with the 
scars of disease ; the brown coat, the black 
worsted stockings, the gray wig with a 
scorched foretop ; the dirty hands, the nails 
bitten and pared to the quick. We see the 
eyes and mouth moving with convulsive 
twitches ; we see the heavy form rolling ; we 

9 1 



Dr. Samuel Johnson 

hear it puffing ; and then comes the " Why, 
sir ! " and the •« What then, sir ? " and the 
11 No, sir ! " and the " You don't see your way 
through the question, sir ! " 

What a singular destiny has been that of 
this remarkable man ! To be regarded in his 
own age as a classic, and in ours as a com- 
panion — to receive from his contemporaries 
that full homage which men of genius have in 
general received only , from posterity — to be 
more intimately known to posterity than other 
men are known to their contemporaries ! 
That kind of fame which is commonly the most 
transient, is, in his case, the most durable. 
The reputation of those writings, which he 
probably expected to be immortal, is every 
day fading ; while those peculiarities of 
manner, and that careless table-talk, the 
memory of which, he probably thought, would 
die with him, are likely to be remembered as 
long as the English language is spoken in any 
quarter of the globe. 



92 



Lord Byron 

From the essay on Moore's Life of Lord Byron, 
Edinburgh Review, June, 1831. 

The Man 

The pretty fable by which the Duchess of 
Orleans illustrates the character of her son 
the regent might, with little change, be applied 
to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had been 
bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had 
been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed 
nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The 
malignant elf who had been uninvited came 
last, and, unable to reverse what her sisters 
had done for their favorite, had mixed up a 
curse with every blessing. In the rank of 
Lord Byron, in his understanding, in his char- 
acter, in his very person, there was a strange 
union of opposite extremes. He was born to 
all that men covet and admire. But in every 
one of those eminent advantages which he 
possessed over others, there was mingled 
something of misery and debasement. He 
was sprung from a house, ancient indeed and 

93 



Lord Byron 

noble, but degraded and impoverished by a 
series of crimes and follies, which had at- 
tained a scandalous publicity. The kinsman 
whom he succeeded had died poor, and, but for 
merciful judges, would have died upon the 
gallows. The young peer had great intel- 
lectual powers ; yet there was an unsound 
part in his mind. He had naturally a gener- 
ous and tender heart ; but his temper was 
wayward and irritable. He had a head which 
statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the de- 
formity of which the beggars in the streets 
mimicked. Distinguished at once by the 
strength and by the weakness of his intellect, 
affectionate yet perverse, a poor lord, and a 
handsome cripple, he required, if ever man 
required, the firmest and the most judicious 
training. But, capriciously as nature had 
dealt with him, the relative to whom the office 
of forming his character was intrusted was 
more capricious still. She passed from par- 
oxysms of rage to paroxysms of fondness. At 
one time she stifled him with her caresses, at 
another time she insulted his deformity. He 
came into the world, and the world treated him 
as his mother treated him — sometimes with 
kindness, sometimes with severity, never with 
justice. It indulged him without discrimi- 
nation, and punished him without discrimi- 
94 



Lord Byron 

nation. He was truly a spoiled child ; not 
merely the spoiled child of his parents, but 
the spoiled child of nature, the spoiled child 
of fortune, the spoiled child of fame, the spoiled 
child of society. His first poems were re- 
ceived with a contempt which, feeble as they 
were, they did not absolutely deserve. The 
poem which he published on his return from 
his travels was, on the other hand, extolled far 
above its merits. At twenty-four, he found 
himself on the highest pinnacle of literary 
fame, with Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and 
a crowd of other distinguished writers, be- 
neath his feet. There is scarcely an instance 
in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an 
eminence. 

Everything that could stimulate and every- 
thing that could gratify the strongest propen- 
sities of our nature — the gaze of a hundred 
drawing-rooms, the acclamations of the whole 
nation, the applause of applauded men, the 
love of the loveliest of women — -all this world, 
and all the glory of it, were at once offered to a 
young man, to whom nature had given violent 
passions, and whom education had never 
taught to control them. He lived as many 
men live who have no similar excuses to plead 
for their faults. But his countrymen and his 
countrywomen would love him and admire him, 

95 



Lord Byron 

They were resolved to see in his excesses 
only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery 
mind which glowed in his poetry. He at- 
tacked religion ; yet in religious circles his 
name was mentioned with fondness, and in 
many religious publications his works were 
censured with singular tenderness, He lam- 
pooned the Prince Regent ; yet he could not 
alienate the Tories. Everything, it seemed, 
was to be forgiven to youth, rank, and genius. 
Then came the reaction. Society, capricious 
in its indignation, as it had been capricious in 
its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward 
and petted darling. He had been worshiped 
with an irrational idolatry. He was perse- 
cuted with an irrational fury. Much has been 
written about those unhappy domestic oc- 
currences which decided the fate of his life. 
Yet nothing ever was positively known to the 
public, but this — that he quarreled with his 
lady, and that she refused to live with him. 
There have been hints in abundance, and 
shrugs and shakings of the head, and "Well, 
well, we know," and " We could an if we 
would," and " If we list to speak," and " There 
be that might an they list." But we are not 
aware that there is before the world, sub- 
stantiated by credible, or even by tangible 
evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord 

9 6 



Lord Byron 

Byron was more to blame than any other man 
who is on bad terms with his wife. The pro- 
fessional men whom Lady Byron consulted 
were undoubtedly ot opinion that she ought 
not to live with her husband. But it is to 
be remembered that they formed that opinion 
without hearing both sides. We do not say, 
we do not mean to insinuate that Lady Byron 
was in any respect to blame. We think that 
those who condemn her on the evidence which 
is now before the public are as rash as those 
who condemn her husband. We will not 
pronounce any judgment ; we cannot, even 
in our own minds, form any judgment on a 
transaction which is so imperfectly known to 
us. It would have been well if, at the time 
of the separation, all those who knew as little 
about the matter then as we know about it 
now, had shown that forbearance, which, 
under such circumstances, is but common 
justice. 

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the 
British public in one of its periodical fits of 
morality. In general, elopements, divorces, 
and family quarrels pass with little notice. 
We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, 
and forget it. But once in six or seven years, 
our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot 
suffer the laws of religion and decency to be 

7 97 



Lord Byron 

violated. We must make a stand against 
vice. We must teach libertines that the Eng- 
lish people appreciate the importance of do- 
mestic ties. Accordingly, some unfortunate 
man, in no respect more depraved than hun- 
dreds whose offenses have been treated with 
lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. 
If he has children, they are to be taken from 
him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven 
from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and 
hissed by the lower. He is in truth, a sort of 
whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all 
the other transgressors of the same class are, 
it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We re- 
flect very complacently on our own severity, 
and compare with great pride the high stand- 
ard of morals established in England with 
the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is 
satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart- 
broken, and our virtue goes quietly to sleep 
for seven years more. 

It is clear that those vices which destroy 
domestic happiness ought to be as much as 
possible repressed. It is equally clear that 
they cannot be repressed by penal legislation. 
It is therefore right and desirable that public 
opinion should be directed against them. 
But it should be directed against them uni- 
formly, steadily, and temperately, not by 

9 8 



Lord Byron 

sudden fits and starts. There should be one 
weight and one measure. Decimation is 
always an objectionable mode of punishment. 
It is the resource of judges too indolent and 
hasty to investigate facts and to discriminate 
nicely between shades of guilt. It is an irra- 
tional practice, even when adopted by mili- 
tary tribunals. When adopted by the tri- 
bunal of public opinion, it is infinitely more 
irrational. It is good that a certain portion of 
disgrace should constantly attend on certain 
bad actions ; but it is not good that the offen- 
ders merely have to stand the risk of a lottery 
of infamy ; that ninety-nine out of every hun- 
dred should escape, and that the hundredth, 
perhaps the most innocent of the hundred, 
should pay for all. We remember to have seen 
a mob assembled in Lincoln's Inn to hoot a 
gentleman, against whom the most oppressive 
proceeding known to the English law was then 
in progress. He was hooted because he had 
been an indifferent and unfaithful husband, as 
if some of the most popular men of the age, 
Lord Nelson, for example, had not been in- 
different and unfaithful husbands. We re- 
member a still stronger case. Will posterity 
believe, that in an age in which men, whose 
gallantries were universally known, and had 
been legally proved, filled some of the highest 

99 



Lord Byron 

offices in the state and in the army, presided 
at the meetings of religious and benevolent 
institutions, were the delight of every society 
and the favorites of the multitude, a crowd 
of moralists went to the theater, in order to 
pelt a poor actor for disturbing the conjugal 
felicty of an alderman ? What there was in 
the circumstances, either of the offender, or of 
the sufferer, to vindicate the zeal of the au- 
dience, we could never conceive. It has never 
been supposed that the situation of an actor 
is peculiarly favorable to the rigid virtues, 
or that an alderman enjoys any special im- 
munity from injuries such as that which on 
this occasion roused the anger of the public. 
But such is the justice of mankind. 

In these cases, the punishment was ex- 
cessive ; but the offense was known and 
proved. The case of Lord Byron was harder, 
True Jedwood justice was dealt out to him. 
First came the execution, then the investiga- 
tion, and last of all, or rather not at all, the ac- 
cusation. The public, without knowing any- 
thing whatever about the transactions in his 
family, flew into a violent passion with him, 
and proceeded to invent stories which might 
justily its anger. Ten or twenty different ac- 
counts of the separation, inconsistent with 
each other, with themselves, and with common 
ioo 



Lord Byron 

sense, circulated at the same time. What 
evidence there might be for any one of these, 
the virtuous people who repeated them neither 
knew nor cared. For in fact these stories 
were not the causes, but the effects of the 
public indignation. They resembled those 
loathsome slanders which Goldsmith, and 
other abject libelers of the same class were 
in the habit of publishing about Bonaparte — 
how he poisoned a girl with arsenic, when 
he was at the military school — how he 
hired a grenadier to shoot Dessaix at Marengo 
— how he filled St. Cloud with all the pol- 
lutions of Capreae. There was a time when 
anecdotes like these obtained some credence 
from persons, who, hating the French Em- 
peror, without knowing why, were eager to 
believe anything which might justify their 
hatred. Lord Byrcn fared in the same way. 
His countrymen were in a bad humor with 
him. His writings and his character had lost 
the charm of novelty. He had been guilty of 
the offense which, of all offenses, is punished 
more severely ; he had been over-praised ; he 
had excited too warm an interest : and the 
public, with its usual justice, chastised him 
for its own folly. The attachments of the 
multitude bear no small resemblance to those 
of the wanton enchantress in the Arabian 

IOI 



Lord Byron 

Tales, who, when the forty days of her fond- 
ness were over, v^as not content with dis- 
missing her lovers, but condemned them to 
expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under severe 
punishments, the crime of having once pleased 
her too well. 

The obloquy which Byron had to endure 
was such as might well have shaken a more 
constant mind. The newspapers were rilled 
with lampoons. The theaters shook with ex- 
ecrations. He was excluded from circles 
where he had lately been the observed of all 
observers. All those creeping things, that 
riot in the decay of nobler natures, hastened 
to their repast ; and they were right ; they 
did after their krad. It is not every day that 
the savage envy of aspiring dunces is gratified 
by the agonies of such a spirit, and the deg- 
radation of such a name. 

The unhappy man left his country for ever. 
The howl of coptumely followed him across 
the sea, up the Rhine, over the Alps ; it grad- 
ually waxed fainter ; it died away. Those 
who had raised it, began to ask each other, 
what, after all, was the matter about which 
they had been so clamorous ; and wished to 
invite back the criminal whom they had just 
chased from them. His poetry became more 
popular than it ever had been ; and his com- 
1 02 



Lord Byron 

plaints were read with tears by thousands and 
tens of thousands who had never seen his 
face. 

He had fixed his home on the shores of the 
Adriatic, in the most picturesque and interest- 
ing of cities, beneath the brightest ot skies, 
and by the brightest of seas. Censoriousness 
was not the vice of the neighbors whom he 
had chosen. They were a race corrupted by 
a bad government and a bad religion ; long 
renowned for skill in the arts of voluptuous- 
ness, and tolerant of all the caprices of sen- 
suality. From the public opinion of the 
country of his adoption he had nothing to 
dread. With the public opinion of the 
country of his birth he was at open war. He 
plunged into wild and desperate excesses, en- 
nobled by no generous or tender sentiment. 
From his Venetian harem, he sent forth volume 
after volume, full of eloquence, of wit, of 
pathos, of ribaldry, and of bitter disdain. His 
health sank under the effects of his intem- 
perance. His hair turned gray. His food 
ceased to nourish him. A hectic fever with- 
ered him up. It seemed that his body and 
mind were about to perish together. 

From this wretched degradation he was 
in some measure rescued by an attachment, 
culpable indeed, yet such as, judged by the 
103 



Lord Byron 

standard of morality established in the coun- 
try where he lived, might be called virtuous. 
But an imagination polluted by vice, a temper 
imbittered by misfortune, and a frame habit- 
uated to the fatal excitement of intoxicationi 
prevented him from fully enjoying the happi- 
ness which he might have derived from the 
purest and most tranquil of his many attach- 
ments. Midnight draughts of ardent spirits 
and Rhenish wines had begun to work the 
ruin of his fine intellect. His verse lost much 
of the energy and condensation which had dis- 
tinguished it. But he would not resign, with- 
out a struggle, the empire which he had ex- 
ercised over the men of his generation. A new 
dream of ambition arose before him, to be the 
center of a- literary party ; the great mover of 
an intellectual revolution ; to guide the public 
mind of England from his Italian retreat, as 
Voltaire had guided the public mind of France 
from the villa of Ferney. With this hope, as 
it should seem, he established The Liberal, 
But, powerfully as he had affected the imagina- 
tions of his contemporaries, he mistook his 
own powers, if he hoped to direct their opin- 
ions : and he still more grossly mistook his own 
disposition, if he thought that he could long 
act in concert with other men of letters. The 
plan failed, and failed ignominiously. Angry 
104 



Lord Byron 

with himself, angry with his coadjutors, he 
relinquished it ; and turned to another pro- 
ject, the last and the noblest of his life. 

A nation, once the first among the nations, 
pre-eminent in knowledge, pre-eminent in 
military glory, the cradle of philosophy, of 
eloquence, and of the fine arts, had been for 
ages bowed down under a cruel yoke. All 
the vices which tyranny generates — the abject 
vices which it generates in those who submit 
to it, the ferocious vices which it generates in 
those who struggle against it — had deformed 
the character ot that miserable race. The 
valor which had won the great battle of 
human civilization, which had saved Europe, 
and subjugated Asia, lingered only among 
pirates and robbers. The ingenuity, once so 
conspicuously displayed in every department 
of physical and moral science, had been de- 
praved into a timid and servile cunning. On 
a sudden, this degraded people had risen on 
their oppressors. Discountenanced or be- 
trayed by the surrounding potentates, they 
had found in themselves something of that 
which might well supply the place of all foreign 
assistance — something of the energy of their 
fathers. 

As a man of letters, Lord Byron could not 
but be interested in the event of his contest. 

i°5 



Lord Byron 

His political opinions, though, like all his 
opinions, unsettled, leaned strongly towards 
the side of liberty. He had assisted the Ital- 
ian insurgents with his purse ; and if their 
struggle against the Austrian government had 
been prolonged, would probably have assisted 
them with his sword. But to Greece he was at- 
tached by peculiar ties. He had, when young, 
resided in that country. Much of his most 
splendid and popular poetry had been in- 
spired by its scenery and by its history. Sick 
of inaction, degraded in his own eyes by his 
private vices and by his literary failures, pin- 
ing for untried excitement and honorable dis- 
tinction, he carried his exhausted body and 
his wounded spirit to the Grecian camp. 

His conduct in his new situation showed so 
much vigor and good sense as to justify us in 
believing, that, if his life had been prolonged, 
he might have distinguished himself as a sol- 
dier and a politician. But pleasure and sorrow 
had done the work of seventy years upon his 
delicate frame. The hand of death was on 
him ; he knew it ; and the only wish which 
he uttered was that he might die sword in 
hand. 

This was denied to him. Anxiety, exer- 
tion, exposure, and those fatal stimulants 
which had become indispensable to him, 
1 06 



Lord Byron 

soon stretched him on a sick-bed, in a strange 
land, amidst strange faces, without one human 
being that he loved near him. There, at 
thirty-six, the most celebrated Englishman of 
the nineteenth century closed his brilliant and 
miserable career. 

The Poet 

Lord Byron, like Mr. Wordsworth, had 
nothing dramatic in his genius. He was, in- 
deed, the reverse of a great dramatist — the 
very antithesis to a great dramatist. All his 
characters — Harold looking back on the west- 
ern sky, from which his country and the sun 
are receding together ; the Giaour, standing 
apart in the gloom of the side-aisle, and cast- 
ing a haggard scowl from under his long hood 
at the crucifix and the censer ; Conrad, lean- 
ing on his sword by the watch-tower ; Lara, 
smiling on the dancers ; Alp, gazing steadily 
on the fatal cloud as it passes before the 
moon ; Manfred, wandering among the preci- 
pices of Berne ; Azo, on the judgment-seat ; 
Ugo, at the bar ; Lambro, frowning on the 
siesta of his daughter and Juan ; Cain, pre- 
senting his unacceptable offering — all are es- 
sentially the same. The varieties are vari- 
eties merely of age, situation, and costume. 
If ever Lord Byron attempted to exhibit men 
107 



Lord Byron 

of a different kind, he always made them 
either insipid or unnatural. Selim is nothing. 
Bonnivart is nothing. Don Juan, in the first 
and best cantos, is a feeble copy of the Page 
in the Marriage of Figaro. Johnson, the man 
whom Juan meets in the slave-market, is a 
most striking failure, How differently would 
Sir Walter Scott have drawn a bluff, fearless 
Englishman in such a situation ! The por- 
trait would have seemed to walk out of the 
canvas. 

Sardanapalus is more hardly drawn than 
any dramatic personage than we can re- 
member. His heroism and his effeminacy, 
his contempt of death, and his dread of a 
weighty helmet, his kingly resolution to be 
seen in the foremost ranks, and the anxiety 
with which he calls for a looking-glass, that 
he may be seen to advantage, are contrasted 
with all the point of Juvenal. Indeed, the 
hint of the character seems to have been taken 
from what Juvenal says of Otho, — 

" Speculum civilis sarcina belli. 
Nimirum summi ducis est occidere Galbam. 
Et curare cutem ; summi constantia civis 
Bebriaci campo spolium affectare Palati, 
Et pressum in faciem digitis extendere panem." 

These are excellent lines in a satire. But it 

is not the business of the dramatist to exhibit 

1 08 



Lord Byron 

characters in this sharp, antithetical way. It 
is not in this way that Shakspeare makes 
Prince Hal rise from the rake of Eastcheap 
into the hero of Shrewsbury, and sink again 
into the rake of Eastcheap. It is not thus 
that Shakspeare has exhibited the union of 
effeminacy and valor in Antony. A dram- 
atist cannot commit a greater error than that 
of following those pointed descriptions of 
character in which satirists and historians in- 
dulge so much. It is by rejecting what is 
natural that satirists and historians produce 
these striking characters. Their great object 
generally is to ascribe to every man as many 
contradictory qualities as possible ; and this 
is an object easily attained. By judicious 
selections and judicious exaggeration, the in- 
tellect and the disposition of any human being 
might be described as being made up of noth- 
ing but startling contrasts. If the dramatist 
attempts to create a being answering to one 
of these descriptions, he fails ; because he re- 
verses an imperfect analytical process. He 
produces, not a man, but a personified epi- 
gram. Very eminent writers have fallen into 
this snare. Ben Johnson has given us an 
Hermogenes taken from the lively lines of 
Horace ; but the inconsistency which is so 
amusing in the satire appears unnatural and 
109 



Lord Byron 

disgusts us in the play. Sir Walter Scott has 
committed a iar more glaring error of the 
same kind, in the novel of Peveril. Admiring, 
as every reader must admire, the keen and 
vigorous lines in which Dryden satirized the 
Duke of Buckingham, he attempted to make 
a Duke of Buckingham to suit them — a real 
living Zimri ; and he made, not a man, but 
the most grotesque of all monsters. A writer 
who should attempt to introduce into a play 
or a novel such a Wharton as the Wharton of 
Pope, or a Lord Hervey answering to Sporus, 
would fail in the same manner. 

But to return to Lord Byron : his women, 
like his men, are all of one breed. Haidee is 
a half-savage and girlish Julia ; Julia is a 
civilized and matronly Haidee. Leila is a 
wedded Zuleika — Zuleika a virgin Leila, 
Gulnare and Medora appear to have been in- 
tentionally opposed to each other ; yet the 
difference is a difference of situation only. 
A slight change of circumstance would, it 
should seem, have sent Gulnare to the lute of 
Medora, and armed Medora with the dagger 
of Gulnare. 

It is hardly too much to say that Lord 

Byron could exhibit only one man and only 

one woman — a man proud, moody, cynical, 

with defiance on his brow, and misery in his 

no 



Lord Byron 

heart ; a scorner of his kind, implacable in 
revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affec- 
tion ; — a woman all softness and gentleness, 
loving to caress and to be caressed, but capa- 
ble of being transformed by love into a tigress. 

Even these two characters, his only two 
characters, he could not exhibit dramatically. 
He exhibited them in the manner, not of 
Shakspeare, but of Clarendon. He analyzed 
them. He made them analyze themselves, 
but he did not make them show themselves. 
He tells us, for example, in many lines of 
great force and spirit, that the speech of Lara 
was bitterly sarcastic, that he talked little of 
his travels, that if much questioned about 
them, his answers became short, and his brow 
gloomy. But we have none of Lara's sarcas- 
tic speeches, or short answers. It is not 
thus that the great masters of human nature 
have portrayed human beings. Homer never 
tells us that Nestor loved to tell long stories 
about his youth ; Shakspeare never tells us 
that in the mind of Iago everything that is 
beautiful and endearing was associated with 
some filthy and debasing idea. 

It is curious to observe the tendency which 

the dialogue of Lord Byron always has to lose 

its character of dialogue, and to become 

soliloquy. The scenes between Manfred and 

in 



Lord Byron 

the Chamois-hunter, between Manfred and 
the Witch of the Alps, between Manfred and 
the Abbot, are instances of this tendency. 
Manfred, after a few unimportant speeches, 
has all the talk to himself. The other inter- 
locutors are nothing more than good listeners. 
They drop an occasional question, or ejacu- 
lation, which sets Manfred off again on the 
inexhaustible topic of his personal feelings. 
If we examine the fine passages in Lord 
Byron's dramas, the description of Rome, for 
example, in Manfred, the description of a 
Venetian revel in Marino Faliero, the dying 
invective which the old Doge pronounces 
against Venice, we shall find there is nothing 
dramatic in them; that they derive none of 
their effect from the character or situation of 
the speaker ; and that they would have been 
as fine, or finer, if they had been published as 
fragments of blank verse by Lord Byron. 
There is scarcely a speech in Shakspeare of 
which the same could be said. No skilful 
reader of the plays of Shakspeare can endure 
to see what are called the fine things taken 
out, under the name of "Beauties," or of 
"Elegant Extracts;" or to hear any single 
passage — " To be or not to be," for example, 
quoted as a sample of the great poet. " To 
be or not to be " has merit undoubtedly as a 

112 



Lord Byron 

composition. It would have merit if put into 
the mouth of a chorus. But its merit as a 
composition vanishes when compared with its 
merit as belonging to Hamlet. It is not too 
much to say that the great plays of Shaks- 
peare would lose less by being deprived of 
all the passages which are commonly called 
the fine passages, than those passages lose 
by being read separately from the play. This 
is perhaps the highest praise which can be 
given to a dramatist. 

On the other hand, it may be doubted 
whether there is, in all Lord Byron's plays, 
a single remarkable passage which owes any 
portion of its interest or effect to its connec- 
tion with the characters or the action. He 
has written only one scene, as far as we can 
recollect, which is dramatic even in manner 
— the scene between Lucifer and Cain. The 
conference in that scene is animated, and 
each of the interlocutors has a fair share of 
it. But this scene, when examined, will be 
found to be a confirmation of our remarks. 
It is a dialogue only in form. It is a soliloquy 
in essence. It is in reality a debate carried 
on within one single, unquiet, and skeptical 
mind, The questions and the answers, the 
objections and the solutions, all belong to the 
same character. 

8 113 



Lord Byron 

A writer who showed so little of dramatic 
skill in works professedly dramatic was not 
likely to write narrative with dramatic effect. 
Nothing could indeed be more rude and care- 
less than the structure of his narrative poems. 
He seems to have thought, with the hero of 
the Rehearsal, that the plot was good for 
nothing but to bring in fine things. His two 
longest works, Childe Harold and Don Juan, 
have no plan whatever. Either of them 
might have been extended to any length, or 
cut short at any point. The state in which 
the Giaour appears illustrates the manner in 
which all his poems were constructed. They 
are all, like the Giaour, collections of frag- 
ments ; and, though there may be no empty 
spaces marked by asterisks, it is still easy to 
perceive, by the clumsiness of the joining, 
where the parts, for the sake of which the 
whole was composed, end and begin. 

It was in description and meditation that he 
excelled. *« Description," as he said in Don 
Juan, "was his forte." His manner is indeed 
peculiar, and is almost unequaled — rapid, 
sketchy, full of vigor ; the selection happy ; 
the strokes few and bold. In spite of the 
reverence which we feel for the genius of Mr. 
Wordsworth, we cannot but think that the 
minuteness of his descriptions often dimin- 
114 



Lord Byron 

ishes their effect. He has accustomed him- 
self to gaze on nature with the eye of a lover 
— to dwell on every feature, and to mark every 
change of aspect. Those beauties which 
strike the most negligent observer, and those 
which only a close attention discovers, are 
equally familiar to him, and are equally promi- 
nent in his poetry. The proverb of old 
Hesiod, that half is often more than the whole, 
is eminently applicable to description. The 
policy of the Dutch, who cut down most of 
the precious trees in the Spice Islands, in 
order to raise the value of what remained, 
was a policy which poets would do well to 
imitate. It was a policy which no poet un- 
derstood better than Lord Byron. Whatever 
his faults might be, he was never, while his 
mind retained its vigor, accused of prolixity, 
His descriptions, great as was their in- 
trinsic merit, derived their principal interest 
from the feeling which always mingled with 
them. He was himself the beginning, the 
middle, and the end of all his own poetry, 
the hero of every tale, the chief object in every 
landscape. Harold,. Lara, Manfred, and a 
crowd of other characters, were universally 
considered merely as loose incognitos of 
Byron ; and there is every reason to believe 
that he meant them to be so considered, 

^5 



Lord Byron 

The wonders of the outer world, the Tagus, 
with the mighty fleets of England riding on 
its bosom, the towers of Cintra overhanging 
the shaggy forest of cork-trees and willows, 
the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of 
the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet 
Lake of Leman, the dell of Egeria, with its 
summer-birds and rustling lizards, the shape- 
less ruins of Rome, overgrown with ivy and 
wall-flowers, the stars, the sea, the mountains 
— all were mere accessaries — the background 
to one dark and melancholy figure. 

Never had any writer so vast a command 
of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, 
and despair. That Marah was never dry. 
No art could sweeten, no draughts could ex- 
haust its perennial waters of bitterness. 
Never was there such variety in monotony 
as that of Byron. From maniac laughter to 
piercing lamentation, there was not a single 
note of human anguish of which he was not 
master. Year after year, and month after 
month, he continued to repeat that to be 
wretched is the destiny of all ; that to be emi- 
nently wretched is the destiny of the eminent ; 
that all the desires by which we are cursed 
lead alike to misery ; — if they are not grati- 
fied, to the misery of disappointment ; if they 
are gratified, to the misery of satiety. His 
116 



Lord Byron 

principal heroes are men who have arrived by 
different roads at the same goal of despair, 
who are sick of life, who are at war with 
society, who are supported in their anguish 
only by an unconquerable pride, resembling 
that of Prometheus on the rock, or of Satan 
in the burning marl ; who can master their 
agonies by the force of their will, and who, to 
the last, defy the whole power of earth and 
heaven. He always described himself as a 
man of the same kind with his favorite crea- 
tions, as a man whose heart has been withered, 
whose capacity for happiness was gone, and 
could not be restored ; but whose invincible 
spirit dared the worst that could befall him 
here or hereafter. 

How much of this morbid feeling sprung 
from an original disease of mind, how much 
from real misfortune, how much from the 
nervousness of dissipation, how much of it 
was fanciful, how much of it was merely 
affected, it is impossible for us, and would 
probably have been impossible for the most 
intimate friends of Lord Byron to decide. 
Whether there ever existed, or can ever 
exist, a person answering to the description 
which he gave of himself, may be doubted : 
but that he was not such a person is beyond 
all doubt. It is ridiculous to imagine that a 
117 



Lord Byron 

man whose mind was really imbued with 
scorn of his fellow-creatures would have 
published three or four books every year in 
order to tell them so ; or that a man, who 
could say with truth that he neither sought 
sympathy nor needed it, would have admitted 
all Europe to hear his farewell to his wife, 
and his blessings on his child. In the second 
canto of Childe Harold, he tells us that he is 
insensible to fame and obloquy : 

** 111 may such contest now the spirit move. 
Which heeds nor keen reproof nor partial praise." 

Yet we know, on the best evidence, that a 
day or two before he published these lines, 
he was greatly, indeed childishly, elated by 
the compliments paid to his maiden speech 
in the House of Lords. 

We are far, however, from thinking that 
his sadness was altogether feigned. He 
was naturally a man of great sensibility ; he 
had been ill-educated ; his feelings had been 
early exposed to sharp trials ; he had been 
crossed in his boyish love ; he had been 
mortified by the failure of his first literary 
efforts ; he was straitened in pecuniary cir- 
cumstances ; he was unfortunate in his 
domestic relations ; the public treated him 
with cruel injustice ; his health and spirits 
118 



Lord Byron 

suffered from his dissipated habits of life ; he 
was, on the whole, an unhappy man. He 
early discovered that, by parading his un- 
happiness before the multitude, he excited an 
unrivaled interest. The world gave him 
every encouragement to talk about his mental 
sufferings. The effect which his first con- 
fessions produced induced him to affect much 
that he did not feel ; and the affectation prob- 
ably reacted on his feelings. How far the 
character in which he exhibited himself was 
genuine, and how far theatrical, would prob- 
ably have puzzled himself to say. 

There can be no doubt that this remarkable 
man owed the vast influence which he exer- 
cised over his contemporaries at least as 
much to his gloomy egotism as to the real 
power of his poetry. We never could very 
clearly understand how it is that egotism, so 
unpopular in conversation, should be so 
popular in writing ; or how it is that men 
who affect in their compositions qualities and 
feelings which they have not, impose so much 
more easily on their contemporaries than on 
posterity. The interest which the loves of 
Petrarch excited in his own time, and the 
pitying fondness with which half Europe 
looked upon Rousseau, are well known. To 
readers of our time, the love of Petrarch 
119 



Lord Byron 

seems to have been love of that kind which 
breaks no hearts ; and the sufferings of Rous- 
seau to have deserved laughter rather than 
pity — to have been partly counterfeited, and 
partly the consequences of his own perverse- 
ness and vanity. 

What our grandchildren may think of the 
character of Lord Byron as exhibited in his 
poetry, we will not pretend to guess. It is 
certain, that the interest which he excited dur- 
ing his life is without a parallel in literary 
history. The feeling with which young 
readers of poetry regarded him can be con- 
ceived only by those who have experienced 
it. To people who are unacquainted with the 
real calamity, " nothing is so dainty sweet as 
lovely melancholy." This faint image of 
sorrow has in all ages been considered by 
young gentlemen as an agreeable excitement. 
Old gentlemen and middle-aged gentlemen 
have so many real causes of sadness, that 
they are rarely inclined "to be as sad as 
night only tor wantonness." Indeed they 
want the power almost as much as the inclina- 
tion. We know very few persons engaged in 
active life, who even if they were to pro- 
cure stools to be melancholy upon, and were 
to sit down with all the premeditation of 
Master Stephen, would be able to enjoy 

120 



Lord Byron 

much of what somebody calls " the ecstasy, 
of wo." 

Among that large class of young persons^ 
whose reading is almost entirely confined to 
works of imagination, the popularity of Lord 
Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures - 
of him, they treasured up the smallest reiics- 
of him ; they learned his poems by hea*tft>> 
and did their best to write like him, and t& 
look like him. Many of them practised at 
the glass, in the hope of catching the curl of 
the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, 
which appear in some of his portraits. A 
few discarded their neckcloths, in imitation 
of their great leader. For some years, the 
Minerva press sent forth no novel without a 
mysterious, unhappy Lara-like peer. The 
number of hopeful undergraduates and 
medical students who became things of dark 
imaginings, on whom the freshness of the 
heart ceased to fall like dew, whose passions 
had consumed themselves to dust, and to 
whom the relief of tears was denied, passes 
all calculation. This was not the worst. 
There was created in the minds of many of 
these enthusiasts a pernicious and absurd 
association between intellectual power and 
moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord 
Byron they drew a system of ethics, com* 

121 



Lord Byron 

"pounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness ; 

-a system in which the two great command- 
ments were, to hate your neighbor, and to 

Hove your neighbor's wife. 

This affectation has passed away ; and a 

'few more years will destroy whatever yet 
remains of that magical potency which once 
belonged to the name of Byron. To us he is 
still a man, young, noble and unhappy. To 
our children he will be merely a writer ; and 
their impartial judgment will appoint his 
place among writers, without regard to his 
rank, or to his private history. That his 
poetry will undergo a severe sifting ; that 
much of what has been admired by his con- 
temporaries will be rejected as worthless, we 
have little doubt. But we have as little 
doubt, that, after the closest scrutiny there 
will still remain much that can only perish 
with the English language. 



122 



England under the Restoration 

From the "History of England," Chapter III 

The Country Gentlemen 

We should be much mistaken if we pic- 
tured to ourselves the squires of the seven- 
teenth century as men bearing a close resem- 
blance to their descendants, the county 
members and chairmen of quarter sessions 
with whom we are familiar. The modern 
country gentleman generally receives a liberal 
education, passes from a distinguished school 
to a distinguished college, and has ample 
opportunity to become an excellent scholar. 
He has generally seen something of foreign 
countries. A considerable part of his life has 
generally been passed in the capital ; and the 
refinements of the capital follow him into the 
country. There is perhaps no class of dwellings 
so pleasing as the rural seats of the English 
gentry. In the parks and pleasure grounds, 
nature, dressed yet not disguised by art, wears 
her most alluring torm. In the buildings, good 

I2 3 



England under the Restoration 

sense and good taste combine to produce a 
happy union of the comfortable and the grace- 
ful. The pictures, the musical instruments, the 
library, would in any other country be consid- 
ered as proving the owner to be an eminently 
polished and accomplished man. A country 
gentleman who witnessed the Revolution was 
probably in receipt of about a fourth part of 
the rent which his acres now yield to his pos- 
terity. He was, therefore, as compared with 
his posterity, a poor man, and was generally 
under the necessity of residing, with little in- 
terruption, on his estate. To travel on the 
Continent, to maintain an establishment in 
London, or even to visit London frequently, 
were pleasures in which only the great pro- 
prietors could indulge. It may be confidently 
affirmed that of the squires whose names were 
then in the Commissions of Peace and Lieu- 
tenancy not one in twenty went to town once 
in five years, or had ever in his life wandered 
so far as Paris. Many lords of manors had 
received an education differing little from that 
of their menial servants. The heir of an 
estate often passed his boyhood and youth at 
the seat of his family with no better tutors 
than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce 
attained learning enough to sign his name to 
a Mittimus. If he went to school and to col- 
124 



England under the Restoration 

lege, he generally returned before he was 
twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and 
there, unless his mind were very happily con- 
stituted by nature, soon forgot his academical 
pursuits in rural business and pleasures. His 
chief serious employment was the care of his 
property. He examined samples of grain, 
handled pigs, and, on market days made bar- 
gains over a tankard with drovers and hop 
merchants. His chief pleasures were com- 
monly derived from field sports and from an 
unrefined sensuality. His language and 
pronunciation were such as we should now 
expect to hear only from the most ignorant 
clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurri- 
lous terms of abuse, were uttered with the 
broadest accent of his province. It w r as easy 
to discern, from the first words which he 
spoke, whether he came from Somersetshire 
or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about 
decorating his abode, and, if he attempted 
decoration, seldom produced anything but 
deformity. The litter of a farmyard gathered 
under the windows of his bedchamber, and 
the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew 
close to his hall door. His table was loaded 
with coarse plenty ; and guests were cordially 
welcomed to it. But, as the habit of drinking 
to excess was general in the class to which he 

1*5 



England under the Restoration 

belonged, and as his fortune did not enable 
him to intoxicate large assemblies daily with 
claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary 
beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in 
those days was indeed enormous. For beer 
then was to the middle and lower classes, not 
only all that beer is, but all that wine, tea, 
and ardent spirits now are. It was only at 
great houses, or on great occasions, that 
foreign drink was placed on the board. The 
ladies of the house, whose business it had 
commonly been to cook the repast, retired as 
soon as the dishes had been devoured, and 
left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. 
The coarse jollity of the afternoon was often 
prolonged till the revelers were laid under the 
table. 

It was very seldom that the country gentle- 
man caught glimpses of the great world ; and 
what he saw of it tended rather to confuse 
than to enlighten his understanding. His 
opinions respecting religion, government, 
foreign countries and former times, having 
been derived, not from study, from observa- 
tion, or from conversation with enlightened 
companions, but from such traditions as were 
current in his own small circle, were the 
opinions of a child. He adhered to them, 
however, with the obstinacy which is generally 
126 



England under the Restoration 

found in ignorant men accustomed to be fed 
with flattery. His animosities were numerous 
and bitter. He hated Frenchmen and Italians, 
Scotchmen and Irishmen, Papists and Pres- 
byterians, Independents and Baptists, Quakers 
and Jews. Towards London and Londoners 
he felt an aversion which more than once 
produced important political effects. His 
wife and daughter were in tastes and acquire 
ments below a housekeeper or a stillroom 
maidof the present day. They stitched and 
spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured mari- 
golds, and made the crust for the venison 
pasty. 

From this description it might be supposed 
that the English esquire of the seventeenth 
century did not materially differ from a rustic 
miller or alehouse keeper of our time. There 
are, however, some important parts of his 
character still to be noted, which will greatly 
modify this estimate. Unlettered as he was 
and unpolished he was still in some most impor- 
tant points a gentleman. He was a member of 
a proud and powerful aristocracy, and was dis- 
tinguished by many both of the good and of the 
bad qualities which belong to aristocrats. His 
family pride was beyond that of a Talbot or a 
Howard. He knew the genealogies and coats 
of arms of all his neighbors, and could tell 
127 



England under the Restoration 

which of them had assumed supporters with* 
out any right, and which of them were so> 
unfortunate as to be great-grandsons of alder- 
men. He was a magistrate, and, as such, 
administered gratuitously to those who dwelt 
around him a rude patriarchal justice, which, 
in spite of innumerable blunders and of oc- 
casional acts of tyranny, was yet better than 
no justice at all. He was an officer of the 
trainbands ; and his military dignity, though 
it might move the mirth of gallants who had 
served a campaign in Flanders, raised his 
character in his own eyes and in the eyes of 
his neighbors. Nor indeed was his soldier- 
ship justly a subject of derision. In every 
county there were elderly gentlemen who had 
seen service which was no child's play. One 
had been knighted by Charles the First, after 
the battle of Edgehill. Another still wore a 
patch over the scar which he had received at 
Naseby. A third had defended his old house 
till Fairfax had blown in the door with a 
petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers, 
with their old swords and holsters, and with 
their old stories about Goring and Lunsford, 
gave to the musters of militia an earnest and 
warlike aspect which would otherwise have 
been wanting. Even those country gentlemen 
who were too young to have themselves ex- 
128 



England under the Restoration 

changed blows with the cuirassiers of the 
Parliament had, from childhood, been sur- 
rounded by the traces of recent war, and fed 
with stories of the martial exploits of their 
fathers and uncles. Thus the character of the 
English esquire of the seventeenth century- 
was compounded of two elements which we 
seldom or never find united. His ignorance 
and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross 
phrases, would, in our time, be considered as 
indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly 
plebeian. Yet he was essentially a patrician* 
and had, in large measure, both the virtues 
and the vices which flourish among men set 
from their birth in high place, and used to 
respect themselves and to be respected by 
others. It is not easy for a generation accus- 
tomed to find chivalrous sentiments only in 
company with liberal studies and polished 
manners to image to itself a man with the 
deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent 
of a carter, yet punctilious on matters of 
genealogy and precedence, and ready to risk 
his life rather than see a stain cast on the 
honor of his house. It is however only by 
thus joining together things seldom or never 
found together in our own experience, that 
we can form a just idea of that rustic aristoc- 
racy which constituted the main strength of 
9 129 



England under the Restoration 

the armies of Charles the First, and which 
long supported, with strange fidelity, the in- 
terest of his descendants. 

The gross, uneducated, untraveled country 
gentleman was commonly a Tory ; but, 
though devotedly attached to hereditary- 
monarchy, he had no partiality for courtiers 
and ministers. He thought, not without rea- 
son, that Whitehall was filled with the most 
corrupt of mankind, and that of the great 
sums which the House of Commons had voted 
to the crown since the Restoration part had 
been embezzled by cunning politicians and part 
squandered on buffdons and foreign courte- 
sans. His stout English heart swelled with 
indignation at the thought that the govern- 
ment of his country should be subject to French 
dictation. Being himself generally an old 
Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he re- 
flected with bitter resentment on the ingrati- 
tude with which the Stuarts had requited their 
best friends. Those who heard him grumble 
at the neglect with which he was treated, and 
at the profusion with which wealth was 
lavished on the bastards of Nell Gwynn and 
Madam Carwell, would have supposed him 
ripe for rebellion. But all this ill humor 
lasted only till the throne was really in danger. 
It was precisely when those whom the sov- 
130 



England under the Restoration 

ereign had loaded with wealth and honors 
shrank from his side that the country gentle- 
men, so surly and mutinous in the season of 
his prosperity, rallied round him in a body. 
Thus, after murmuring twenty years at the 
misgovernment of Charles the Second, they 
came to his rescue in his extremity, when his 
own Secretaries of State and the Lords of 
his own Treasury had deserted him, and en- 
abled him to gain a complete victory over 
the opposition ; nor can there be any doubt 
that they would have shown equal loyalty to 
his brother James if James would, even at the 
last moment, have refrained from outraging 
their strongest feeling. For there was one in- 
stitution, and one only, which they prized even 
more than hereditary monarchy ; and that 
institution was the Church of England. Their 
love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect 
of study or meditation. Few among them 
could have given any reason, drawn from 
Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adher- 
ing to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity ; 
nor were they, as a class, by any means 
strict observers of that code of morality which 
is common to all Christian sects. But the 
experience of many ages proves that men may 
be ready to fight to the death, and to perse- 
cute without pity, for a religion whose creed 

131 



England under the Restoration 

they do not understand, and whose precepts 
they habitually disobey.* 

Polite Literature 

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The 
language of Rome, indeed, had not altogether 
lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still, in 
many parts of Europe, almost indispensable 
to a traveler or a negotiator. To speak it 
well was therefore a much more common ac- 
complishment than in our time ; and neither 
Oxford nor Cambridge wanted poets who, on 
a great occasion, could lay at the foot of the 
throne happy imitations of the verses in which 
Virgil and Ovid had celebrated the greatness 
of Augustus. 

Yet even the Latin was giving way to a 
younger rival. France united at that time 
almost every species of ascendency. Her 
military glory was at the height. She had 
vanquished mighty coalitions. She had dictat- 
ed treaties. She had subjugated great cities 
and provinces. She had forced the Castilian 
pride to yield her the precedence. She had 

* My notion of the country gentlemen of the seventeenth 
century has been derived from sources too numerous to be 
recapitulated. I must leave my description to the judgment of 
those who have studied the history and the lighter literature of 
that age. 

*3 2 



England under the Restoration 

summoned Italian princes to prostrate them- 
selves at her footstool. Her authority was 
supreme mail matters of good breeding, from a 
duel to a minuet. She determined how a gen- 
tleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke 
must be, whether his heels must be high or 
low, and whether the lace on his hat must be 
broad or narrow. In literature she gave law 
to the world. The fame of her great writers 
filled Europe. No other country could pro- 
duce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic 
poet equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as 
La Fontaine, a rhetorician so skilful as Bos- 
suet. The literary glory of Italy and of Spain 
had set ; that of Germany had not yet dawned. 
The genius, therefore, of the eminent men 
who adorned Paris shone forth with a splen- 
dor which was set off to full advantage by 
contrast. France, indeed, had at that time 
an empire over mankind, such as even the 
Roman Republic never attained. For, when 
Rome was politically dominant, she was in 
arts and letters the humble pupil of Greece. 
France had, over the surrounding countries, 
at once the ascendency which Rome had over 
Greece, and the ascendency which Greece had 
over Rome. French was fast becoming the 
universal language, the language of fashion- 
able society, the language of diplomacy. At 

*33 



England under the Restoration 

several courts princes and nobles spoke it 
more accurately and politely than their mother 
tongue. In our island there was less of this 
servility than on the Continent. Neither our 
good nor our bad qualities were those of imi- 
tators. Yet even here homage was paid, 
awkwardly indeed and sullenly, to the literary 
supremacy of our neighbors. The melodious 
Tuscan, so familiar to the gallants and ladies 
of the court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt. 
A gentleman who quoted Horace or Terence 
was considered in good company as a pomp- 
ous pedant. But to garnish his conversation 
with scraps of French was the best proof 
which he could give of his parts and attain- 
ments.* New canons of criticism, new models 
of style came into fashion, The quaint in- 
genuity which had deformed the verses of 
Donne, and had been a blemish on those of 
Cowley, disappeared from our poetry. Our 
prose became less majestic, less artfully in- 
volved, less variously musical than that of an 
earlier age, but more lucid, more easy, and 
better fitted for controversy and narrative. 

* Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says, 

" For, though to smatter words of Greek 
And Latin be the rhetorique 
Of pedants courted and vainglorious, 
To smatter French is meritorious." 

134 



England under the Restoration 

In these changes it is impossible not to recog- 
nize the influence of French precept and of 
French example. Great masters of our 
language, in their most dignified compositions, 
affected to use French words, when English 
words, quite as expressive and sonorous, were 
at hand : * and from France was imported 
the tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our 
soil, drooped, and speedily died. 

It would have been well if our writers had 
also copied the decorum which their great 
French contemporaries, with few exceptions, 
preserved ; for the profligacy of the English 
plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age is 
a deep blot on our national fame. The evil 
may easily be traced to its source. The wits 
and the Puritans had never been on friendly 
terms. There was no sympathy between the 
two classes. They looked on the whole system 
of human life from different points and in 
different lights. The earnest of each was the 
jest of the other. The pleasures of each were 
the torments of the other. To the stern pre- 

* The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem 
on the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who cer- 
tainly could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words 
from any foreign tougue : — 

" Hither in summer evenings you repair 
To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air." 

13s 



England under the Restoration 

cisian even the innocent sport of the fancy 
seemed a crime. To light and festive natures 
the solemnity of the zealous brethren furnished 
copious matter of ridicule. From the Refor- 
mation to the civil war, almost every writer, 
gifted with a fine sense of the ludicrous, had 
taken some opportunity of assailing the 
straight-haired, snuffling, whining saints, who 
christened their children out of the Book of 
Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at the sight 
of Jack in the Green, and who thought it im- 
pious to taste plum porridge on Christmas 
day. At length a time came when the 
laughers began to look grave in their turn* 
The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having fur- 
nished much good sport during two genera- 
tions, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, 
grimly smiling, trod down under their feet 
the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds 
inflicted by gay and petulant malice were re- 
taliated with the gloomy and implacable 
malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their 
own rancor for virtue. The theatres were 
closed, The players were flogged. The press 
was put under the guardianship of austere 
licensers. The Muses were banished from 
their own favorite haunts, Cambridge and 
Oxford. Cowley, Crashaw, and Cleveland 
were ejected from their fellowships. The 
136 



England under the Restoration 

young candidate for academical honors was 
no longer required to write Ovidian epistles 
or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly inter- 
rogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsari- 
ans as to the day and hour when he expreienced 
the new birth. Such a system was of course 
fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing 
and under visages composed to the expression 
of austerity, lay hid during several years the 
intense desire of license and of revenge. At 
length that desire was gratified. The Resto- 
ration emancipated thousands of minds from 
a yoke which had become insupportable. The 
old fight recommenced, but with an animosity 
altogether new. It was now not a sportive 
combat, but a war to the death. The Round- 
head had no better quarter to expect from 
those whom he had persecuted than a cruel 
slave-driver can expect from insurgent slaves 
still bearing the marks of his collars and his 
scourges. 

The war between wit and Puritanism soon 
became a war between wit and morality. 
The hostility excited by a grotesque caricature 
of virtue did not spare virtue herself. What- 
ever the canting Roundhead had regarded 
with reverence was insulted. Whatever he 
had proscribed was favored. Because he had 
been scrupulous about trifles, all scruples 

137 



England under the Restoration 

were treated with derision. Because he had 
covered his failings with the mask of devotion, 
men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynic 
impudence all their most scandalous vices on 
the public eye. Because he had punished 
illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin 
purity and conjugal fidelity were made a jest. 
To that sanctimonious jargon which was his 
Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not 
less absurd and much more odious. As he 
never opened his mouth except in Scriptural 
phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentle- 
men never opened their mouths without utter- 
ing ribaldry of which a porter would now be 
ashamed, and without calling on their Maker 
to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast 
them, and damn them. 

It is not strange, therefore, that our polite 
literature, when it revived with the revival of 
the old civil and ecclesiastical polity, should 
have been profoundly immoral. A few 
eminent men, who belonged to an earlier and 
better age, were exempt from the general 
contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed 
the sentiments which had animated a more 
chivalrous generation. Cowley, distinguished 
as a loyalist and as a man of letters, raised 
his voice courageously against the immorality 
which disgraced both letters and loyalty. A 

138 



England under the Restoration 

mightier poet, tried at once by pain, danger, 
poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditated, 
undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged 
all around him, a song so sublime and so holy 
that it would not have misbecome the lips of 
those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that 
inner eye which no calamity could darken, 
flinging down on the jasper pavement their 
crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigor- 
ous and fertile genius of Butler, if it did not 
altogether escape the prevailing infection, took 
the disease in a mild form. But these were 
men whose minds had been trained in a world 
which had passed away. They gave place in 
no longtime to a younger generation of wits ; 
and of that generation, from Dryden down to 
Durfey, the common characteristic was hard- 
hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, 
at once inelegant and inhuman. The in- 
fluence of these writers was doubtless noxious 
yet less noxious than it would have been had 
they been less depraved. The poison which 
they administered was so strong that it was, 
in no long time, rejected with nausea. None 
of them understood the dangerous art of asso- 
ciating images ot unlawful pleasure with all 
that is endearing and ennobling. None of 
them was aware that a certain decorum is 
essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery 

1 39 



England under the Restoration 

may be more alluring than exposure, and that 
the imagination may be far more powerfully 
moved by delicate hints which impel it to 
exert itself, than by gross descriptions which 
it takes impassively. 

The spirit of the Anti-puritan reaction per- 
vades almost the whole polite literature of the 
reign of Charles the Second. But the very 
quintessence of that spirit will be found in the 
comic drama. The playhouses, shut by the 
meddling fanatic in the day of his power, were 
again crowded. To their old attractions new 
and more powerful attractions had been added. 
Scenery, dresses, and decorations, such as 
w r ould now be thought mean or absurd, but 
such as would have been esteemed incredibly 
magnificent by those who, early in the seven- 
teenth century, sate on the filthy benches of 
the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the 
Rose^ dazzled the eyes of the multitude. The 
fascination of sex was called in to aid the 
fascination of art : and the young spectator 
saw, with emotions unknown to the contem- 
poraries of Shakspeare and Johnson, tender 
and sprightly heroines personated by lovely 
women. From the day on which the theatres 
were reopened they became seminaries of vice ; 
and the evil propagated itself. The profligacy 
of the representations soon drove away sober 
140 



England under the Restoration 

people. The frivolous and dissolute who re- 
mained required every year stronger and 
stronger stimulants. Thus the artists cor- 
rupted the spectators, and the spectators the 
artists, till the turpitude of the drama became 
such as must astonish all who are not aware 
that extreme relaxation is the natural effect of 
extreme restraint, and that an age of hypocrisy 
is, in the regular course of things, followed by 
an age of impudence. 

Nothing is more characteristic of the times 
than the care with which the poets contrived 
to put all their loosest verses into the mouths 
of women. The compositions in which the 
greatest license was taken were the epilogues. 
They were almost always recited by favorite 
actresses ; and nothing charmed the depraved 
audience so much as to hear lines grossly 
indecent repeated by a beautiful girl, who was 
supposed to have not yet lost her innocence.* 

Our theatre was indebted in that age for 
many plots and characters to Spain, to France, 
and to the old English masters : but whatever 
our dramatists touched they tainted. In their 
imitations the houses ofCalderon's stately and 
high-spirited Castilian gentlemen became sties 
of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a procuress, 

* Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practise with his 
usual force and keenness. 

141 



England under the Restoration 

Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's 
Agnes an adulteress. Nothing could be so 
pure or so heroic but that it became foul and 
ignoble by transfusion through those foul and 
ignoble minds. 

Such was the state of the drama ; and the 
drama was the department of polite literature 
in which a poet had the best chance of obtain- 
ing a subsistence by his pen, The sale of 
books was so small that a man of the greatest 
name could hardly expect more than a pittance 
for the copyright of the best performance. 
There cannot be a stronger instance than the 
fate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. 
That volume was published when he was 
universally admitted to be the chief of living 
English poets. It contains about twelve thou- 
sand lines. The versification is admirable, 
the narratives and descriptions full of life. 
To this day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon and 
Iphigenia, Theodore and Honoria, are the 
delight both of critics and of schoolboys. 
The collection includes Alexander's Feast, 
the noblest ode in our language. For the 
copyright Dryden received two hundred and 
fifty pounds, less than in our days has some- 
times been paid for two articles in a review.* 

* The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's edition of 
Dryden. \ 

142 



England under the Restoration 

Nor does the bargain seem to have been a 
hard one. For the book went off slowly ; and 
the second edition was not required till the 
author had been ten years in his grave. By 
writing for the theatre it was possible to earn 
a much larger sum with much less trouble. 
Southern made seven hundred pounds by one 
play.* Otway was raised from beggary to 
temporary affluence by the success of his Don 
Carlos. f Shadwell cleared a hundred and 
thirty pounds by a single representation of 
the Squire of Alsatia.J The consequence was 
that every man who had to live by his wit 
wrote plays, whether he had any internal 
vocation to write plays or not. It was thus 
with Dryden. As a satirist he has rivaled 
Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps might, 
with care and meditation, have rivaled Lu- 
cretius. Of lyric poets he is, if not the most 
sublime, the most brilliant and spirit-stirring. 
But nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts, 
had withheld from him the dramatic faculty. 
Nevertheless all the energies of his best years 
were wasted on dramatic composition. He 
had too much judgment not to be aware that 
in the power of exhibiting character by means 

* See-the Life of Southern, by Shiels. 
t See Rochester's Trial of the Poets. 
t Some Account of the English Stage. 

143 



England under the Restoration 

of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency 
he did his best to conceal, sometimes by sur- 
prising and amusing incidents, sometimes by 
stately declamation, sometimes by harmonious 
numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well 
suited to the taste of a profane and licentious 
pit. Yet he never obtained any theatrical 
success equal to that which rewarded the 
exertions of some men far inferior to him in 
general powers. He thought himself fortunate 
if he cleared a hundred guineas by a play ; a 
scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger 
than he could have earned in any other way 
by the same quantity of labor.* 

The recompense which the wits of that age 
could obtain from the public was so small, that 
they were under the necessity of eking out 
their incomes by levying contributions on the 
great. Every rich and good-natured lord was 
pestered by authors with a mendicancy so 
importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may 
in our time seem incredible. The patron to 
whom a work was inscribed was expected to 
reward the writer with a purse of gold. The 
fee paid for the dedication of a book was often 
much larger than the sum which any pub- 
lisher would give for the copyright. Books 
were therefore frequently printed merely that 

* Life of Southern, by Shields. 
144 



England under the Restoration 

they might be dedicated. This traffic in 
praise produced the effect which might have 
been expected. Adulation pushed to the 
verge, sometimes of nonsense, and sometimes 
of impiety, was not thought to disgrace a poet. 
Independence, veracity, self-respect, were 
things not required by the world from him. 
In truth, he was in morals something between 
a pandar and a beggar. 



10 145 



The Death of Charles II 

From the " History of England," Chapter IV. 

The death of King Charles the Second took 
the nation by surprise. His frame was 
naturally strong, and did not appear to have 
suffered from excess. He had always been 
mindful of his health even in his pleasures ; 
and his habits were such as promised a long 
life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was 
on all occasions which required tension of the 
mind, he was active and persevering in bodily 
exercise. He had, when young, been re- 
nowned as a tennis player,* and was, even in 
the decline of life, an indefatigable walker. 
His ordinary pace was such that those who were 
admitted to the honor of his society found it 
difficult to keep up with him. He rose early, 
and generally passed three or four hours a 
day in the open air. He might be seen, before 
the dew was off the grass in St. James's Park, 
striding among the trees, playing with his 
spaniels, and flinging corn to his ducks ; and 
these exhibitions endeared him to the common 

* Pepys's Diary, Dec 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667. 
146 



The Death of Charles II 

people, who always love to see the great 
unbend.* 

At length, towards the close of the year 
1684, he was prevented, by a slight attack of 
what was supposed to be gout, from rambling 
as usual. He now spent his mornings in his 
laboratory, where he amused himself with ex- 
periments on the properties of mercury. His 
temper seemed to have suffered from confine- 
ment. He had no apparent cause for disquiet. 
His kingdom was tranquil : he was not in 
pressing want of money : his power was 
greater than it had ever been : the party 
which had long thwarted him had been beaten 
down ; but the cheerfulness which had sup- 
ported him against adverse fortune had van- 
ished in this season of prosperity. A trifle now 
sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which 
had borne up against defeat, exile, and penury. 
His irritation frequently showed itself by 
looks and words such as could hardly have 
been expected from a man so eminently dis- 
tinguished by good humor and good breed- 
ing. It was not supposed however that his 
constitution was seriously impaired. f 

His palace had seldom presented a gayer 

t Burnet, i. 606 ; Spectator, No. 462 ; Lords' Journals, Octo- 
ber 28, 1678 ; Cibber's Apology. 

* Burnet, i. 605, 606 ; Welwood; North's Life of Guildford, 
251. 

147 



The Death of Charles II 

or a more scandalous appearance than on the 
evening of Sunday the first of February 1685.* 
Some grave persons who had gone thither, 
after the fashion of that age, to pay their duty 
to their sovereign, and who had expected 
that, on such a day, his court would wear a 
decent aspect, were struck with astonishment 
and horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, 
an admirable relic of the magnificence of the 
Tudors, was crowded with revelers and 
gamblers. The king sate there chatting and 
toying with three women, whose charms were 
the boast, and whose vices were the disgrace, 
of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess 
of Cleveland, was there, no longer young,- but 
still retaining some traces of that superb and 
voluptuous loveliness which twenty years be- 
fore overcame the hearts of all men. There 
too was the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose 
soft and infantine features were lighted up 
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Man- 
cini, Duchess of Mazarin, and niece of the 
great Cardinal, completed the group. She 
had been early removed from her native Italy 
to the court where her uncle was supreme. 
His power and her own attractions had drawn 

* I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever I 
give only one date, I follow the old style, which was, in the 
seventeenth century, the style of England ; but I reckon the year 
from the first of January. 

I48 



The Death of Charles II 

k crowd of illustrious suitors round her. 
Charles himself, during his exile, had sought 
her hand in vain. No gift of nature or of 
fortune seemed to be wanting to her. Her 
face was beautiful with the rich beauty of the 
South, her understanding quick, her manners 
graceful, her rank exalted, her possessions 
immense ; but her ungovernable passions had 
turned all these blessings into curses. She 
had found the misery of an ill-assorted mar- 
riage intolerable, had fled from her husband, 
had abandoned her vast wealth, and, after 
having astonished Rome and Piedmont by her 
adventures, had fixed her abode in England. 
Her house was the favorite resort of men of 
wit and pleasure, who, for the sake of her smiles 
and her table, endured her frequent fits of inso- 
lence and ill-humor. Rochester and Godolphin 
semetimes forgot the cares of state in her 
company. Barillon and Saint Evremond 
found in her drawing-room consolation for 
their long banishment from Paris. The learn- 
ing of Vossius, the wit of Waller, were daily 
employed to flatter and amuse her. But her 
diseased mind required stronger stimulants, 
and sought them in gallantry, in basset, and 
in usquebaugh.* While Charles flirted with 

* Saint Evremond, passim ; Saint Real, M^moires de la 
Duchesse de Mazarin ; Rochester's Farewell ; Evelyn's Diary f 
Sept. 6, 1676, June n, 169. 

149 



The Death of Charles II 

his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a 
handsome boy, whose vocal performances 
were the delight of Whitehall, and were re- 
warded by numerous presents of rich clothes, 
ponies, and guineas, warbled some amorous 
verses.* A party of twenty courtiers was 
seated at cards round a large table on which 
gold was heaped in mountains.! Even then 
the King had complained that he did not feel 
quite well. He had no appetite for his sup- 
per : his rest that night was broken ; but on 
the following morning he rose, as usual, early. 
To that morning the contending factions in 
his council had, during some days, looked 
forward with anxiety. The struggle between 
Halifax and Rochester seemed to be approach- 
ing a decisive crisis. Halifax, not content with 
having already driven his rival from the Board 
of Treasury, had undertaken to prove him 
guilty of such dishonesty or neglect in the con- 
duct of the finances as ought to be punished by- 
dismission from the public service. It was 
even whispered that the Lord President would 
probably be sent to the Tower. The King 
had promised to inquire into the matter. 
The second of February had been fixed for the 

* Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 28, 1684-5 ; Saint Evremond's Letter 
to D^ry. 
t Id., February 4, 1684-5. 

15° 



The Death of Charles II 

investigation ; and several officers of the rev- 
enue had been ordered to attend with their 
books on that day.* But a great turn of for- 
tune was at hand. 

Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed 
when his attendants perceived that his utter- 
ance was indistinct, and that his thoughts 
seemed to be wandering. Several men of 
rank had, as usual, assembled to see their 
sovereign shaved and dressed. He made an 
effort to converse with them in his usual gay 
style ; but his ghastly look surprised and 
alarmed them. Soon his face grew black ; 
his eyes turned in his head ; he uttered a cry, 
staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his 
lords. A physician who had charge of the 
royal retorts and crucibles happened to be 
present. He had no lancet ; but he opened a 
vein with a penknife. The blood flowed freely ; 
but the King was still insensible. 

He was laid on his bed, where, during a 
short time, the Duchess of Portsmouth hung 
over him with the familiarity of a wife. But 
the alarm had been given. The Queen and the 
Duchess of York were hastening to the room. 

* Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170 • The true 

Patriot vindicated, or a Justification of his Excellency the E 

of R ; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Rooks prove that Bur- 
net had good intelligence. 

15* 



The Death of Charles II 

The favorite concubine was forced to retire 
to her own apartments. Those apartments 
had been thrice pulled down and thrice re- 
built by her lover to gratify her caprice. The 
very furniture of the chimney was massy sil- 
ver. Several fine paintings, which properly 
belonged to the Queen, had been transferred 
to the dwelling of the mistress. The side- 
boards were piled with richly wrought plate. 
In the niches stood cabinets, the masterpieces 
of Japanese art. On the hangings, fresh from 
the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints 
which no English tapestry could rival, birds 
of gorgeous plumage, landscapes, hunting 
matches, the lordly terrace of Saint Germains, 
the statues and fountains of Versailles.* In 
the midst of this splendor, purchased by guilt 
and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself 
up to an agony of grief, which, to do her jus- 
tice, was not wholly selfish. 

And now the gates of Whitehall, which 
ordinarily stood open to all comers, were 
closed. But persons whose faces were known 
were still permitted to enter. The antecham- 
bers and galleries were soon filled to over- 
flowing ; and even the sick room was crowded 
with peers, privy councilors, and foreign 
ministers. All the medical men of note in 

* Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24. 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683. 

15 2 



The Death of Charles II 

London were summoned. So high did politi- 
cal animosities run that the presence of some 
Whig physicians was regarded as an extraor- 
dinary circumstance.* One Roman Catholic* 
whose skill was then widely renowned, Doctor 
Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several 
of the prescriptions have been preserved. One 
of them is signed by fourteen Doctors. The 
patient was bled largely. Hot iron was ap- 
plied to his head. A loathsome volatile salt, 
extracted from human skulls, was forced into 
his mouth. He recovered his senses ; but 
he was evidently in a situation of extreme 
danger. 

The Queen was for a time assiduous in her 
attendance. The Duke of York scarcely left 
his brother's bedside. The Primate and four 
other bishops were then in London. They 
remained at Whitehall all day, and took it by 
turns to sit up at night in the King's room, 
The news of his illness filled the capital with 
sorrow and dismay. For his easy temper and 
affable manners had won the affection of a 
large part of the nation ; and those who most 
disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity 
to the stern and earnest bigotry of his brother. 

On the morning of Thursday the fifth of 
February, the London Gazette announced that 

* Dugdale's Correspondence. 

153 



The Death of Charles II 

His Majesty was going on well, and was 
thought by the physicians to be out of danger. 
The bells of all the churches rang merrily ; 
and preparations for bonfires were made in 
the streets. But in the evening it was known 
that a relapse had taken place, and that the 
medical attendants had given up all hope. 
The public mind was greatly disturbed ; but 
there was no disposition to tumult. The Duke 
of York, who had already taken on himself to 
give orders, ascertained that the City was 
perfectly quiet, and that he might without 
difficulty be proclaimed as soon as his brother 
should expire. 

The King was in great pain, and com- 
plained that he felt as if a fire was burning with- 
in him. Yet he bore up against his sufferings 
with a fortitude which did not seem to belong 
to his soft and luxurious nature. The sight 
of his misery affected his wife so much that 
she fainted, and was carried senseless to her 
chamber. The prelates who were in waiting 
had from the first exhorted him to prepare for 
his end. They now thought it their duty to 
address him in a still more urgent manner. 
William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
an honest and pious, though narrow-minded, 
man, used great freedom. " It is time," he 
said, " to speak out ; for, Sir, you are about 

*54 



The Death of Charles II 

to appear before a Judge who is no respecter 
of persons." The King answered not a 
word. 

Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 
then tried his powers of persuasion. He was 
a man of parts and learning, of quick sensi- 
bility and stainless virtue. 'His elaborate works 
have long been forgotten ; but his morning 
and evening hymns are still repeated daily in 
thousands of dwellings. Though like most 
of his order, zealous for monarchy, he was no 
sycophant. Before he became a Bishop, he 
had maintained the honor of his gown by 
refusing, when the court was at Winchester, 
to let Eleanor Gwynn lodge in the house 
which he occupied there as a prebendary.* 
The King had sense enough to respect so 
manly a spirit. Of all the prelates he liked 
Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, 
that the good Bishop now put forth all his 
•eloquence. His solemn and pathetic exhorta- 
tion awed and melted the bystanders to such 
a degree that some among them believed him 
to be filled with the same spirit which, in the 
old time, had, by the mouths of Nathan and 
Elias, called sinful princes to repentance. 
Charles however was unmoved. He made no 
objection indeed when the service for the visi- 

* Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713. 

iS5 



The Death of Charles II 

tation of the sick was read. In reply to the 
pressing questions of the divines, he said that 
he was sorry for what he had done amiss ; and 
tie suffered the absolution to be pronounced 
over him according to the forms of the Church 
of England : but, when he was urged to de- 
clare that he died in the communion of that 
Church, he seemed not to hear what was 
said ; and nothing could induce him to take 
the Eucharist from the hands of the Bishops. 
A table with bread and wine was brought to 
his bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said 
that there was no hurry, and sometimes that 
he was too weak. 

Many attributed this apathy to contempt 
for divine things, and many to the stupor 
which often precedes death. But there were 
in the palace a few persons who knew better. 
Charles had never been a sincere member of 
the Established Church. His mind had long 
oscillated between Hobbism and Popery. 
When his health was good and his spirits high 
he was a scoffer. In his few serious moments 
he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of 
York was aware of this, but w r as entirely 
occupied with the care of his own interests. 
He had ordered the outports to be closed 
He had posted detachments of the Guards in> 
different parts of the city. He had also Dro- 

156 



The Death of Charles II 

cured the feeble signature of the dying King 
to an instrument by which some duties, grant- 
ed only till the demise of the Crown, were let 
to farm for a term of three years. These 
things occupied the attention of James to such 
a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, 
he was indiscreetly and unseasonably eager 
to bring over proselytes to his Church, he 
never reflected that his brother was in danger 
of dying without the last sacraments. This 
neglect was the more extraordinary because 
the Duchess of York had, at the request of the 
Queen, suggested, on the morning on which 
the King was taken ill, the propriety of procur- 
ing spiritual assistance. For such assistance 
Charles was at last indebted to an agency 
very different from that of his pious wife and 
sister-in-law. A life of frivolity and vice had 
not extinguished in the Duchess of Portsmouth 
all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness 
which is the glory of her sex. The French 
ambassador Barillon, who had come to the 
palace to inquire after the King, paid her a 
visit. He found her in an agony of sorrow. 
She took him into a secret room, and poured 
out her whole heart to him. " I have," she 
said, " a thing of great moment to tell you. 
If it were known my head would be in danger. 
The King is really and truly a Catholic ; but 

*57 



The Death of Charles II 

he will die without being reconciled to the 
Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant 
clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving 
scandal. The Duke is thinking only of him- 
self. Speak to him. Remind him that there 
is a soul at stake. He is master now. He 
can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will 
be too late." 

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took 
the Duke aside, and delivered the message 
of the mistress. The conscience of James 
smote him. He started as if roused from 
sleep, and declared that nothing should pre- 
vent him from discharging the sacred duty 
which had been too long delayed. Several 
schemes were discussed and rejected. At 
last the Duke commanded the crowd to 
stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, 
and whispered something which none of the 
spectators could hear, but which they sup- 
posed to be some question about affairs of 
state. Charles answered in an audible voice, 
" Yes, yes, with all my heart." None of the 
bystanders, except the French Ambassador, 
guessed that the King was declaring his 
wish to be admitted into the bosom of the 
Church of Rome. 

11 Shall I bring a priest ? " said the Duke. 
«' Do, brother," replied the sick man. " For 



The Death of Charles II 

God's sake do, and lose no time. But no ; 
you will get into trouble." ■• If it costs me 
my life," said the Duke, " I will fetch a 
priest." 

To find a priest, however, for such a pur- 
pose, at a moment's notice, was not easy. 
For, as the law then stood, the person who 
admitted a proselyte into the Roman Catholic 
Church was guilty of a capital crime. The 
Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese noble- 
man, who, driven by political troubles from 
his native land, had been hospitably received 
at the English court, undertook to procure a 
confessor. He had recourse to his country- 
men who belonged to the Queen's household ; 
but he found that none of her chaplains knew 
English or French enough to shrive the King. 
The Duke and Barillon were about to send 
to the Venetian Minister for a clergyman 
when they heard that a Benedictine monk, 
named John Huddleston, happened to b,e at 
Whitehall. This man had, with great risk 
to himself, saved the King's life after the 
battle of Worcester, and had, on that ac- 
count, been, ever since the Restoration, a 
privileged person. In the sharpest proc- 
lamations which had been put forth against 
Popish priests, when false witnesses had in- 
flamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had 

159 



The Death of Charles II 

been excepted by name.* He readily con-: 
sented to put his life a second time in peril 
for his prince ; but there was still a difficulty. 
The honest monk was so illiterate that he did 
not know what he ought to say on an oc- 
casion of such importance. He however ob- 
tained some hints, through the interven- 
tion of Castel Melhar, from a Portuguese ec- 
clesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought 
up the back stairs by Chiffinch, a confidential 
servant, who, if the satires of that age are to 
be credited, had often introduced visitors of a 
very different description by the same en- 
trance. The Duke then, in the King's name, 
commanded all who were present to quit the 
room, except Lewis Duras, Earl of Fever- 
sham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. 
Both these Lords professed the Protestant 
religion ; but James conceived that he could 
count on their fidelity. Feversham, a 
Frenchman of noble birth, and nephew of the 
great Turenne, held high rank in the Eng- 
lish army, and was Chamberlain to the 
Queen. Bath was Groom of the Stole. 

The Duke's orders were obeyed ; and even 
the physicians withdrew. The back door 

* See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillon and Bur- 
net say that Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts of 
Parliament made against priests ; but this is a mistake. 

l6o 



The Death of Charles II 

was then opened ; and Father Huddleston 
entered. A cloak had been thrown over his 
sacred vestments ; and his shaven crown was 
concealed by a flowing wig. " Sir," said the 
Duke, " this good man once saved your life. 
He now comes to save your soul." Charles 
faintly answered, " He is welcome." Hud- 
dleston went through his part better than had 
been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened 
to the confession, pronounced the absolution, 
and administered extreme unction. He 
asked if the King wished to receive the Lord's 
supper, "Surely," said Charles, "if I am 
not unworthy." The host was brought in 
Charles feebly strove to rise and kneel before 
it. The priest made him lie still, and as- 
sured him that God would accept the humilia- 
tion of the soul, and would not require the 
humiliation of the body. The King found so 
much difficulty in swallowing the bread that 
it was necessary to open the door and pro- 
cure a glass of water. This rite ended, the 
monk held up a crucifix before the penitent, 
charged him to fix his last thoughts on the 
sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. 
The whole ceremony had occupied about three 
quarters of an hour ; and, during that time, 
the courtiers who filled the outer room had 
communicated their suspicions to each other 
n 161 



The Death of Charles II 

by whispers and significant glances. The 
door was at length thrown open, and the 
crowd again filled the chamber of death. 

It was now late in the evening. The King 
seemed much relieved by what had passed. 
His natural children were brought to his bed- 
side, the Dukes of Grafton, Southampton, 
and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess of 
Cleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son of 
Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke of Richmond, 
son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles 
blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar 
tenderness to Richmond. One face which 
should have been there was wanting. The 
eldest and best loved child was an exile and 
a wanderer. His name was not once men- 
tioned by his father. 

During the night Charles earnestly recom- 
mended the Duchess of Portsmouth and her 
boy to the care of James ; " And do not," he 
good-naturedly added, " let poor Nelly 
starve." The Queen sent excuses for her ab- 
sence by Halifax. She said that she was too 
much disordered to resume her post by the 
couch, and implored pardon for any offense 
, which she might unwittingly have given, 
" She ask my pardon, poor woman ! " cried 
Charles ; " I ask hers with all my heart." 

The morning light began to peep through 
162 



The Death of Charles II 

the windows of Whitehall ; and Charles de- 
sired the attendants to pull aside the cur- 
tains, that he might have one more look at 
the day. He remarked that it was time to 
wind up a clock which stood near his bed. 
These little circumstances were long remem- 
bered because they proved beyond dispute 
that, when he declared himself a Roman 
Catholic, he was in full possession of his 
faculties. He apologized to those who had 
stood round him all night for the trouble 
which he had caused. He had been, he 
said, a most unconscionable time dying ; but 
he hoped that they would excuse it. This 
was the last glimpse of the exquisite urbanity, 
so often found potent to charm away the re- 
sentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon 
after dawn the speech of the dying man 
failed. Before ten his senses were gone* 
Great numbers had repaired to the churches 
at the hour of morning service. When the 
prayer for the King was read, loud groans 
and sobs showed how deeply his people felt 
for him. At noon on Friday, the sixth of 
February, he] passed away without a strug- 
gle.* 

* Clark's Life of James the Second, i. 746. Orig. Mem.; 
Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 1-18, 1685 ; Van Citters's Despatches 
of Feb.j3-i3 and Feb. 6-16. Huddleston's Narrative ; Letters of 

163 



The Death of Charles II 

Philip, second Earl of Chesteifield, 277 ; Sir H. Ellis's Original 
Letters, First Series, iii. 333 ; Second Series iv. 74 ; Chaillot MS.; 
Burnet, i. 606 ; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4, 1684-5 i Welwood's 
Memories, 140; North's Life of Guildford, 252; Examen, 648; 
Hawkins's Life of Ken ; Dryden's Threnodia Augustalis ; Sir H. 
Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. See also a frag- 
ment of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is printed 
in the European Magazine for April, 1705. Atlesbury calls Bur- 
net an impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to 
any candid and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. 
I have seen in the British Museum, and also in the Library of 
the Royal Institution, a curious broadside containing an account 
of the death of Charles. It will be found in the Somers Collec- 
tions. The author was evidently a zealous Roman Catholic, and 
must have had access to good sources of information. I strongly 
suspect that he had been in communication, directly or indirec- 
tly, with James himself. No name is given at length ; but the 
initials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said 
that the D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed to 
his brother by P. M. A. C. F. I must own myself quite unable 
to decipher the last five letters. It is some consolation that Sir 
Walter Scott was equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first 
edition of this work was published, several ingenious conjectures 
touching these mysterious letters have been communicated to 
me ; but I am convinced that the true solution has not yet been 
suggested. (1850.) I still greatly doubt whether the riddle has 
been solved. But the most plausible interpretation is one which, 
with some variations, occurred, almost at the same time, to 
myself and to several other persons; I am inclined to read 
" Pere Mansuete, A Cordelier Friar." Mansuete, a Cordelier, 
was then James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it pecul- 
iarly belonged to remind James of a sacred duty which had been 
culpably neglected. The writer of the broadside must have 
been unwilling to inform the world that a soul which many de- 
vout Roman Catholics had left to perish had been snatched from 
destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of loose 
character. It is therefore not unlikely that he would prefer a 
fiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could 
not fail to give scandal. (1856). 

164 



The Death of Charles II 

It should seem that no transactions in history ought to be 
more accurately known to us than those which took place round 
the deathbed of Charles the Second. We have several relations 
written by persons who were actually in his room. We have 
several relations written by persons who, though not themselves 
eye-witnesses, had the best opportunity of obtaining information 
from eye-witnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast 
mass of materials into a consistent narrative will find the task a 
difficult one. Indeed James and his wife, when they told the 
story to the nuns of Chaillot, could not agree as to some circum- 
stances. The Queen said that, after Charles had received the 
last sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewed their exhorta- 
tions. The King said that nothing of the kind took place. 
" Surely," said the Queen, "you told me so yourself." u It is 
impossible that I could have told you so," said the King ; " for 
nothing of the sort happened." 



*6S 



The Revolution of 1688 

From the " History of England,*' Chapter X+ 

Thus was consummated the English Rev- 
olution. When we compare it with those rev- 
olutions which have, during the last sixty- 
years, overthrown so many ancient govern- 
ments, we cannot but be struck by its peculiar 
character. Why that character was so 
peculiar is sufficiently obvious, and yet seems 
not to have been always understood either by: 
eulogists or by censors. 

The Continental revolutions of the eight- 
eenth and nineteenth centuries took place in 
countries where all trace of the limited mon- 
archy of the middle ages had long been ef- 
faced. The right of the prince to make laws 
and to levy money had, during many genera-* 
tions, been undisputed. His throne was 
guarded by a great regular army. His ad- 
ministration could not, without extreme peril, 
be blamed even in the mildest terms. His 
subjects held their personal liberty by no 
other tenure than his pleasure. Not a single 
institution was left which had within the 



The Revolution of 1688 

memory of the oldest man, afforded efficient 
protection to the subject against the utmost 
excess of tyranny. Those great councils 
which had once curbed the regal power had 
sunk into oblivion. Their composition and 
their privileges were known only to antiquaries. 
We cannot wonder, therefore, that when men 
who had been thus ruled succeeded in wrest- 
ing supreme power from a government which 
they had long in secret hated, they should 
have been impatient to demolish and unable 
to construct, that they should have been 
fascinated by every specious novelty, that they 
should have proscribed every title, ceremony, 
and phrase associated with the old system, 
and that, turning away with disgust from their 
own national precedents and traditions, they 
should have sought for principles of govern- 
ment in the writings of theorists, or aped, 
with ignorant and ungraceful affectation, the 
partiots of Athens and Rome. As little can 
we wonder that the violent action of the rev- 
olutionary spirit should have been followed 
by reaction equally violent, and that confusion 
should speedily have engendered despotism 
sterner than that from which it had sprung. 

Had we been in the same situation ; had 
Strafford succeeded in his favorite scheme 
of Thorough ; had he formed an army as 
167 



The Revolution of 1688 

numerous and as well disciplined as that 
which, a few years later, was formed by Crom- 
well ; had a series of judicial decisions, 
similar to that which was pronounced by the 
Exchequer Chamber in the case of ship money 
transferred to the crown the right of taxing 
the people ; had the Star Chamber and the 
High Commission continued to fine, mutilate, 
and imprison every man who dared to raise 
his voice against the government ; had the 
press been as completely enslaved here as at 
Vienna or at Naples ; had our Kings gradu- 
ally drawn to themselves the whole legislative 
power ; had six generations of Englishmen 
passed away without a single session of Par- 
liament ; and had we then at length risen up 
in some moment of wild excitement against 
our masters, what an outbreak would that 
have been ! With what a crash, heard and 
felt to the farthest end of the world, would 
the whole vast fabric of society have fallen ! 
How many thousands of exiles, once the most 
prosperous and the most refined members of 
this great community, would have begged 
their bread in Continental cities, or have 
sheltered their heads under huts of bark in 
the uncleared forests of America ! How 
often should we have seen the pavement of 
London piled up in barricades, the houses 
168 



The Revolution of 1688 

dinted with bullets, the gutters foaming with 
blood ! How many times should we have 
rushed widly from extreme to extreme, sought 
refuge from anarchy in despotism, and been 
again driven by despotism into anarchy t 
How many years of blood and confusion would 
it have cost us to learn the very rudiments of 
political science ! How many childish theo- 
ries would have duped us ! How many rude 
and ill-poised constitutions should we have 
set up, only to see them tumble down ! Happy 
would it have been for us if a sharp discipline 
of half a century had sufficed to educate us 
into a capacity of enjoying true freedom. 

These calamities our Revolution averted. 
It was a revolution strictly defensive, and had 
prescription and legitimacy on its side. Here, 
and here only, a limited monarchy of the thir- 
teenth century had come down unimpaired 
to the seventeenth century. Our parliament- 
ary institutions were in full vigor. The main 
principles of our government were excellent. 
They were not, indeed, formally and exactly 
set forth in a single written instrument : but 
they were to be found scattered over our an- 
cient and noble statutes ; and, what was of far 
greater moment, they had been engraven on 
the hearts of Englishmen during four hundred 
years. That, without the consent of the rep- 
169 



The Revolution of 1688 

resentatives of the nation, no legislative act 
could be passed, no tax imposed, no regular 
soldiery kept up, that no man could be impris- 
oned, even for a day, by the arbitrary will of 
the sovereign, that no tool of power could 
plead the royal command as a justification for 
violating any right of the humblest subject, 
were held both by Whigs and Tories, to be 
fundamental laws of the realm. A realm of 
which these were the fundamental laws stood 
in no need of a new constitution. 

But, though a new constitution was not 
needed, it was plain that changes were re- 
quired. The misgovernment of the Stuarts, 
and the troubles which that misgovernment 
had produced, sufficiently proved that there 
was somewhere a defect in our polity ; and 
that defect it was the duty of the Convention 
to discover and to supply. 

Some questions of great moment were still 
open to dispute. Our constitution had begun 
to exist in times when statesmen were not 
much accustomed to frame exact definitions. 
Anomalies, therefore, inconsistent with its 
principles and dangerous to its very existence, 
had sprung up almost imperceptibly, and, not 
having during many years caused any serious 
inconvenience, had gradually acquired the 
force of prescription. The remedy for these 
170 



The Revolution of 1688 

evils "was to assert the rights of the people in 
such a language as should terminate all con- 
troversy, and to declare that no precedent 
could justify any violation of those rights. 

When this had been done it would be im- 
possible for our rulers to misunderstand the 
law : but, unless something more were done, 
it was by no means improbable that they 
might violate it. Unhappily the Church had 
long taught the nation that hereditary mon- 
archy, alone among our institutions, was 
divine and inviolable ; that the right of the 
House of Commons to a share in the legisla- 
tive power was a right merely human, but 
that the right ot the King to the obedience of 
his people was from above ; that the Great 
Charter was the statute which might be re- 
pealed by those who had made it, but that the 
rule which called the princes of the blood- 
royal to the throne in order of succession was 
of celestial origin, and that any Act of Parlia- 
ment inconsistent with that rule was a nullity. 
It is evident that, in a society in which such 
superstitions prevail, constitutional freedom 
must ever be insecure. A power which is re- 
garded merely as the ordinance of man can- 
not be an efficient check on a power which is 
regarded as the ordinance of God. It is vain 
to hope that laws, however excellent, will per- 
171 



The Revolution of 1688 

manently restrain a king who, in his own opin- 
ion, and in the opinion of a great part of his 
people, has an authority infinitely higher in 
kind than the authority which belongs to those 
laws. To deprive royalty of these mysterious 
attributes, and to establish the principle that 
Kings reigned by a right in no respect differ- 
ing from the right by which freeholders chose 
knights of the shire, or from the right by which 
Judges granted writs of Habeas Corpus, was 
absolutely necessary to the security of our lib- 
erties. 

Thus the Convention had two great duties 
to perform. The first was to clear the fun- 
damental laws of the realm from ambiguity. 
The second was to eradicate from the minds, 
both of the governors and of the governed, the 
false and pernicious notion that the royal pre- 
rogative was something more sublime and holy 
than those fundamental laws. The former 
object was attained by the solemn recital and 
claim with which the Declaration of Right 
commences ; the latter by the resolution 
which pronounced the throne vacant, and in- 
vited William and Mary to fill it. 

The change seems small. Not a single 

flower of the crown was touched. Not a single 

new right was given to the people. The 

whole English law, substantive and adjective, 

172 



The Revolution of 1688 

was, in the judgment of all the greatest law* 
yers, of Holt arid Treby, of Maynard and 
Somers, almost exactly the same after the Rev- 
olution as before it. Some controverted 
points had been decided according to the sense 
of the best jurists : and there had been a slight 
deviation from the ordinary course of succes- 
sion. This was all ; and this was enough. 

As our Revolution was a vindication of an- 
cient rights, so it was conducted with strict 
attention to ancient formalities. In almost 
every word and act may be discerned a pro- 
found reverence for the past. The Estates of 
the Realm deliberated in the old halls and 
according to the old rules. Powle was con- 
ducted to his chair between his mover and 
his seconder with the accustomed forms. The 
Sergeant with his mace brought up the mes- 
sengers of the Lords to the table of the Com- 
mons ; and the three obeisances were duly- 
made. The conference was held with all the 
antique ceremonial. On one side of the table, 
in the Painted Chamber, the managers for the 
Lords sat covered and robed in ermine and 
gold. The managers for the Commons stood 
bareheaded on the other side. The speeches 
present an almost ludicrous contrast to the 
revolutionary oratory of every other country. 
Both the English parties agreed in treating 

*73 



The Revolution of 1688 

with solemn respect the ancient constitutional 
traditions of the state. The only question 
was in what sense those traditions were to 
be understood. The assertors of liberty said 
not a word about the natural equality of men 
and the inalienable sovereignty of the people, 
about Harmodius or Timoleon, Brutus, the 
elder or Brutus the younger. When they were 
told that, by the English law, the crown, at 
the moment of a demise, must descend to the 
next heir, they answered that, by the English 
law, a living man could have no heir. When 
they were told that there was no precedent for 
declaring the throne vacant, they produced 
from among the records in the Tower a roll 
of parchment, near three hundred years old, 
on which, in quaint characters and barbarous 
Latin, it was recorded that the Estates of the 
Realm had declared vacant the throne of a 
perfidious and tyrannical Plantagenet. When 
at length the dispute had been accommodated, 
the new sovereigns were proclaimed with the 
old pageantry. All the fantastic pomp of 
heraldry was there, Clarencieux and Norroy, 
Portcullis and Rouge Dragon, the trumpets, 
the banners, the grotesque coats embroidered 
with lions and lilies. The title of King of 
France, assumed by the conqueror of Cressy, 
was not omitted in the royal style. To us, 

174 



The Revolution of 1688 

who have lived in the year 1848, it may seem 
almost an abuse of terms to call a proceeding, 
conducted with so much deliberation, with so 
much sobriety, and with such minute atten- 
tion to proscriptive etiquette, by the terrible 
name of Revolution. 

And yet this revolution, of all revolutions 
the least violent, has been of all revolutions 
the most beneficent. It finally decided the 
great question whether the popular element 
which had, ever since the age of Fitzwalter 
and DeMontfort, been found in the English 
polity, should be destroyed by the monarchical 
element, or should be suffered to develop it- 
self freely, and to become dominant. The 
strife between the two principles had been 
long, fierce, and doubtful. It had lasted 
through four reigns. It had produced sedi- 
tions, impeachments, rebellions, battles, 
sieges, proscriptions, judicial massacres. 
Sometimes liberty, sometimes royalty, had 
seemed to be on the point of perishing. Dur- 
ing many years one half of the energy of Eng- 
land had been employed in counteracting the 
other half. The executive power and the leg- 
islative power had so effectually impeded 
each other that the state had been of no ac- 
count in Europe. The King at Arms, who 
proclaimed William and Mary before White- 

*75 



The Revolution of 1688 

hall Gate, did in truth announce that this great 
struggle was over ; that there was entire 
union between the throne and the Parliament ; 
that England, long dependent and degraded, 
was again a power of the first rank ; that the 
ancient laws by which the prerogative was 
bounded would thenceforth be held as sacred 
as the prerogative itself, and would be fol- 
lowed out to all their consequences ; that the 
executive administration would be conducted 
in conformity with the sense of the represent- 
atives of the nation ; and that no reform, which 
the two Houses should, alter mature deliber- 
ation, propose, would be obstinately withstood 
by the sovereign. The Declaration of Right, 
though it made nothing law which had not 
been law before, contained the germ of the 
law which gave religious freedom to the Dis- 
senter, of the law which secured the indepen- 
dence of the judges, of the law which limited 
the duration of Parliaments, of the law which 
placed the liberty of the press under the pro- 
tection of juries, of the law which prohibited 
the slave trade, of the law which abolished 
the sacramental test, of the law which relieved 
the Roman Catholics from civil disabilities, of 
the law which reformed the representative 
system, of every god law which has been 
passed during more than a century and a half, 
176 



The Revolution of 1688 

of every good law which may hereafter, in the 
course of ages, be found necessary to pro- 
mote the public weal, and to satisfy the de- 
mands of public opinion. 

The highest eulogy which can be pro- 
nounced on the revolution of 1688 is this, that 
it was our last revolution. Several genera- 
tions have now passed away since any wise 
and patriotic Englishman has meditated re- 
sistance to the established government. In 
all honest and reflecting minds there is a con- 
viction, daily strengthened by experience, that 
the means of effecting every improvement 
which the constitution requires may be found 
within the constitution itself. 

Now, if ever, we ought to be able to ap- 
preciate the whole importance of the stand 
which was made by our forefathers against 
the House of Stuart.* All around us the 
world is convulsed by the agonies of great na- 
tions. Governments which lately seemed likely 
to stand during ages have been on a sudden 
shaken and overthrown. The proudest Cap- 
itals of Western Europe have streamed with 
civil blood. All evil passions, the thirst of 
gain and the thirst of vengeance, the anti- 
pathy of class to class, the antipathy of race 
to race, have broken loose from the control 

* This passage was written in November, 1848. 

12 177 



The Revolution of 1688 

of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety 
have clouded the faces and depressed the 
hearts of millions. Trade has been suspended 
and industry paralyzed. The rich have be- 
come poor ; and the poor have become poorer. 
Doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, 
to all industry, to all domestic charities, doc- 
trines which, if carried into effect, would, in 
thirty years, undo all that thirty centuries have 
done for mankind, and would make the fair- 
est provinces of France and Germany as 
savage as Congo or Patagonia, have been 
avowed from the tribune and defended by the 
sword. Europe has been threatened with 
subjugation by barbarians, compared with 
whom the barbarians who marched under 
Attila and Albion were enlightened and hu- 
mane. The truest friends of the people have 
with deep sorrow owned that interests more 
precious than any political privileges were in 
jeopardy, and that it might be necessary to 
sacrifice even liberty in order to save civiliza- 
tion. Meanwhile in our island the regular 
course of government has never been for a 
day interrupted. The few bad men who 
longed tor license and plunder have not had 
the courage to confront for one moment the 
strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm ar- 
ray round a parental throne. And, if it be 

178 



The Revolution of 1688 

asked what has made us to differ from others, 
the answer is that we never lost what others 
are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It 
is because we had a preserving revolution in 
the seventeenth century that we have not had 
a destroying revolution in the nineteeth. It 
is because we had freedom in the midst of 
servitude that we have order in the midst of 
anarchy. For the authority of law, for the 
security of property, for the peace of our streets, 
for the happiness of our homes, our gratitude 
is due, under Him who raises and pulls down 
nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parlia- 
ment, to the Convention, and to William of 
Orange. 



179 



The Origin of the National Debt 

From the " History of England," Chapter XIX. 

During the interval between the Restora- 
tion and the Revolution the riches of the na- 
tion had been rapidly increasing. Thousands 
of busy men found every Christmas that, after 
the expenses of the year's housekeeping had 
been defrayed out of the year's income, a sur- 
plus remained ; and how that surplus was to 
be employed was a question of some difficulty. 
In our time, to invest such a surplus, at some- 
thing more than three per cent, on the best 
security that has ever been known in the 
world, is the work of a few minutes. But, in 
the seventeenth century, a lawyer, a physician, 
a retired merchant, who had saved some 
thousands and who wished to place them 
safely and profitably, was often greatly em- 
barrassed. Three generations earlier, a man 
who had accumulated wealth in a trade or a 
profession generally purchased real property 
or lent his savings on mortgage. But the 
number of acres in the kingdom had remained 
the same ; and the value of those acres, 
180 



The Origin of the National Debt 

though it had greatly increased, had by no 
means increased so fast as the quantity of 
capital which was seeking for employment. 
Many too wished to put their money where 
they could find it at an hour's notice, and 
looked about for some species of property 
which could be more readily transferred than 
a house or a field. A capitalist might lend 
on bottomry or on personal security : but, if 
he did so, he ran a great risk of losing interest 
and principal. There were a few joint stock 
companies, among which the East India Com- 
pany held the foremost place ; but the demand 
for the stock of such companies was far greater 
than the supply. Indeed the cry for a new 
East India Company was chiefly raised by 
persons who had found difficulty in placing 
their savings at interest on good security. 
So great was that difficulty that the practice 
of hoarding was common. We are told that 
the father of Pope, the poet, who retired from 
business in the City about the time of the 
Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country 
a strong box containing near twenty thousand 
pounds, apd took out from time to time 
what was required for household expenses ; 
and it is highly probable that this was not a 
solitary case. At present the quantity of coin 
which is hoarded by private persons is so 
181 



The Origin of the National Debt 

small that it would, if brought forth, make no 
perceptible addition to the circulation. But, 
in the earlier part of the reign of William 
the Third, all the greatest writers on currency 
were of opinion that a very considerable 
mass of gold and silver was hidden in secret 
drawers and behind wainscots. 

The natural effect of this state of things 
was that a crowd of projectors, ingenious 
and absurd, honest and knavish, employed 
themselves in devising new schemes for the 
employment of redundant capital. It was 
about the year 1688, that the word stock- 
jobber was first heard in London, In the 
short space of four years a crowd of com- 
panies, every one of which confidently held 
out to subscribers the hope of immense gains, 
sprang into existence; the Insurance Company, 
the Paper Company, the Lutestring Company, 
the Pearl Fishery Company, the Glass Bottle 
Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe 
Coal Company, the Swordblade Company. 
There was a Tapestry Company, which would 
soon furnish pretty hangings for all the 
parlors of the middle class and for all the bed- 
chambers of the higher. There was a Copper 
Company, which proposed to explore the 
mines of England, and held out a hope that 
they would prove not less valuable than those 
182 



The Origin of the National Debt 

of Potosi. There was a Diving Company, 
which undertook to bring up precious effects 
from shipwrecked vessels, and which an- 
nounced that it had laid in a stock of wonder- 
ful machines resembling complete suits of 
armor. In front of the helmet was a huge 
glass eye like that of Polyphemus ; and out 
of the crest went a pipe through which the 
air was to be admitted. The whole process 
was exhibited on the Thames, Fine gentle- 
men and fine ladies were invited to the show, 
were hospitably regaled, and were delighted 
by seeing the divers in their panoply descend 
into the river, and return laden with old iron 
and ship's tackle. There was a Greenland 
Fishing Company, which could not fail to 
drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses 
out of the Northern Ocean. There was a 
Tanning Company, which promised to furnish 
leather superior to the best that was brought 
from Turkey or Russia. There was a society 
which undertook the office of giving gentle- 
men a liberal education on low terms, and 
which assumed the sounding name of the 
Royal Academies Company. In a pompous 
advertisement it was announced that the 
directors of the Royal Academies Company 
had engaged the best masters in every branch 
of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty 

183 



The Origin of the National Debt 

thousand tickets at twenty shillings each. 
There was to be a lottery : two thousand 
prizes were to be drawn : and the fortunate 
holders of the prizes w r ere to be taught, at the 
charge of the Company, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, 
French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, 
heraldry, japanning, fortification, book-keep- 
ing, and the art of playing the theorbo. Some 
Oi" these companies took large mansions and 
printed their advertisements in gilded letters, 
Others, less ostentatious, were content with 
ink, and met at coffee-houses in the neighbor- 
hood of the Royal Exchange. Jonathan's 
and Garraway's were in a constant ferment 
with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings oi 
directors, meetings of proprietors. Time 
bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive 
combinations were formed, and monstrous 
fables w r ere circulated, for the purpose of 
raising or depressing the price of shares. 
Our country witnessed for the first time those 
phenomena with which a long experience has 
made us familiar. A mania of which the 
symptoms were essentially the same with 
those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of 
1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the public 
mind. An impatience to be rich, a contempt 
for those slow but sure gains which are the 
proper reward of industry, patience, and 
184 



The Origin of the National Debt 

thrift, spread through society. The spirit of - 
the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took pos- 
session of the grave Senators of the City, 
Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It 
was much easier and much more lucrative to- 
put forth a lying prospectus announcing' a- 
new stock, to persuade ignorant people that" 
the dividends could not fall short of twenty 
per cent, and to part with five thousand 
pounds ot this imaginary wealth for ten thou- 
sand solid guineas, than to load a ship with 
a well chosen cargo for Virginia or the Lev- 
ant. Every day some new bubble was puffed 
into existence, rose buoyant, shone bright, 
burst, and was forgotten.* 

The new form which covetousness had 
taken furnished the comic poets and satirists 

* For this account of the origin of stockjobbing in the City of 
London I am chiefly indebted to a most curious periodical 
paper, entitled, " Collection for the Improvement of Husban- 
dry and Trade, by J. Houghton, F. R. S." It is in fact a 
weekly history of the commerical speculations of that time. I 
have looked through the files of several years. In No. 33, 
March 17, 1692-3, Houghton says, " The buying and selling of 
Actions is one of the great trades now on foot. I find a great 
many do not understand the affair.'" On June 13, and June 
22, 1694, he traces the whole progress of stockjobbing. On 
July 13, of the same year he makes the first mention of time 
bargains. Whoever is desirous to know more about the com- 
panies mentioned in the text may consult Houghton's Collec- 
tion, and a pamphlet entitled Angliae Tutamen, published in 
1695. 

185 



The Origin of the National Debt 

with an excellent subject ; nor was that sub- 
ject the less welcome to them because some 
of the most unscrupulous and most successful 
of the new race of gamesters were men in 
sad colored clothes and lank hair, men who 
-called cards the Devil's books, men who 
thought it a sin and a scandal to win or lose 
twopence over a backgammon board. It 
was in the last drama of Shadwell that the 
hypocrisy and knavery of these speculators 
was, for the first time, exposed to public ridi- 
cule. He died in November, 1692, just before 
his Stockjobbers came on the stage ; and the 
epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in 
deep mourning. The best scene is that in 
which four or five stern Nonconformists, clad 
in the full Puritan costume, after discussing 
the prospects ot the Mousetrap Company and 
the Fleakilling Company, examine the ques- 
tion whether the Godly may lawfully hold 
stock in a Company for bringing over Chinese 
ropedancers. " Considerable men have 
shares," says one austere person in cropped 
hair and bands ; " but verily I question 
whether it be lawful or not. These doubts 
are removed by a stout old Roundhead colonel 
who had fought at Marston Moor, and who 
reminds his weaker brother that the saints 
need not themselves see the ropedancing, and 



The Origin of the National Debt 

that, in all probability, there will be no rope- 
dancing to see. " The thing," he says, " is 
like to take. The shares will sell well ; and 
then we shall not care whether the dancers 
come over or no." It is important to observe 
that this scene was exhibited and applauded 
before one farthing of the national debt had 
been contracted. So ill informed were the 
numerous writers who, at a later period, as- 
cribed to the national debt the existence of 
stockjobbing and ol all the immoralities con- 
nected with stockjobbing. The truth is that 
society had, in the natural course of its growth, 
reached a point at which it was inevitable 
that there should be stockjobbing whether 
there were a national debt or not, and inevi- 
table also that, if there were a long and 
costly war, there should be a national debt. 

How indeed was it possible that a debt 
should not have been contracted, when one 
party was impelled by the strongest motives 
to borrow, and another was impelled by 
equally strong motives to lend ? A moment 
had arrived at which the government lound 
it impossible, without exciting the most for- 
midable discontents, to raise by taxation the 
supplies necessary to defend the liberty and 
independence of the nation ; and at that very 
moment, numerous capitalists were looking 

i8 7 



The Origin of the National Debt 

round them in vain for some good mode of 
investing their savings, and for want of such 
a mode, were keeping their wealth locked 
up, or were lavishing it on absurd projects. 
Riches sufficient to equip a navy which 
would sweep the German Ocean and the 
Altantic of French pivateers, riches sufficient 
to maintain an army which might retake 
Namur and avenge the disaster of Steinkirk, 
were lying idle, or were passing away from the 
owners into the hands of sharpers. A states- 
man might well think that some part of the 
wealth which was daily buried or squandered 
might, with advantage to the proprietor, to 
the taxpayer, and to the State, be attracted 
into the Treasury. Why meet the extraor- 
dinary charge of a year ot war by seizing 
the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardwork- 
ing families, by compelling one country 
gentleman to cut down his trees before they 
were ready for the axe, another to let the 
cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third to 
take away his hopeful son from the University, 
when Change Alley was swarming with people 
who did not know what to do with their 
money and who were pressing everybody to 
borrow it ? 

It was often asserted at a later period by 
Tories, who hated the national debt most of 
1 88 



The Origin of the National Debt 

all things, and who hated Burnet most of all 
men, that Burnet was the person who first 
advised the government to contract a na- 
tional debt. But this assertion is proved by- 
no trustworthy evidence, and seems to be 
disproved by the Bishop's silence. Of all 
men he was the least likely to conceal the 
fact that an important fiscal revolution had 
been his work. Nor was the Board of Treas- 
ury at that time one which much needed, or 
was likely much to regard, the counsels of 
a divine. At that Board sate Godolphin, the 
most prudent and experienced, and Mon- 
tague, the most daring and inventive of fi- 
nanciers. Neither of these eminent men could 
be ignorant that it had long been the practise 
of the neighboring states to spread over many 
years of peace the excessive taxation which 
was made necessary by one year of war. In 
Italy this practise had existed through several 
generations. France had, during the war 
which began in 1672 and ended in 1679, b° r - 
rowed not less than thirty millions of our 
money. Sir William Temple, in his interest- 
ing work on the Batavian federation, had told 
his countrymen that, when he was ambas- 
sador at the Hague, the single province ot 
Holland, then ruled by the frugal and prudent 
De Witt, owed about five millions sterling, for 
189 



The Origin of the National Debt 

which interest at four per cent was always 
ready to the day, and that, when any part of 
the principal was paid off, the public creditor 
received his money with tears, well knowing 
that he could find no other investment equally 
secure. The wonder is not that England 
should have at length imitated the example 
both of her enemies and of her allies, but 
that the fourth year of her arduous and ex- 
hausting struggle against Lewis should have 
been drawing to a close before she resorted 
to an expedient so obvious. 

On the fifteenth of December, 1692, the 
House of Commons resolved itself into a Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means. Somers took 
the chair. Montague proposed to raise a 
million by way of loan : the proposition was 
approved ; and it was ordered that a bill should 
be brought in. The details of the scheme 
were much discussed and modified ; but the 
principle appears to have been popular with 
all parties. The moneyed men were glad to 
have a good opportunity of investing what 
they had hoarded. The landed men, hard 
pressed by the load of taxation; were ready 
to consent to anything for the sake of present 
ease. No member ventured to divide the 
House. On the twentieth of January the bill 
was read a third time, carried up to the Lords 
190 



The Origin of the National Debt 

by Somers, and passed by them without any 
amendment.* 

By this memorable law new duties were 
imposed on beer and other liquors. These 
duties were to be kept in the Exchequer sepa- 
rate from all other receipts, and were to form 
a fund on the credit of which a million was 
to be raised by life annuities. As the annui- 
tants dropped off, their annuities were to be 
divided among the survivors, till the number 
of survivors was reduced to seven. After 
that time, whatever fell in was to go to the 
public. It was therefore certain that the 
-eighteenth century would be far advanced 
before the debt would be finally extinguished ; 
and, in fact, long after King George the Third 
was on the throne, a few aged men were re- 
ceiving large incomes from the State, in re- 
turn for a little money which had been ad- 
vanced to King William on their account 
when they were chiLdren.f The rate of inter- 
est was to be ten per cent till the year 1700, 

♦Commons' Journals; Stat. 4 W.& M. c. 3. 

t William Duncombe, whose name is well known to curious 
students of literary history, and who, in conjunction with his 
son John, translated Horace's works, died in 1769, having been 
seventy-seven years an annuitant under the Act of 1692. A 
hundred pounds had been subscribed in William Duncombe's 
name when he was three years old ; and, for this small sum, he 
received thousands upon thousands. Literary Anecdotes of 
the Eighteenth Century, viii. 265. 

191 



The Origin of the National Debt 

and after that year seven per cent. The 
advantages offered to the public creditor by 
this scheme may seem great, but were not 
more than sufficient to compensate him for 
the risk which he ran. It was not impossible 
that there might be a counter-revolution ; and 
it was certain that if there were a counter- 
revolution, those who had lent money to 
William would lose both interest and prin- 
cipal. 

Such was the origin of that debt which has 
since become the greatest prodigy that ever 
perplexed the sagacity and confounded the 
pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every 
stage in the growth of that debt the nation 
has set up the same cry of anguish and de- 
spair. At every stage in the growth of that 
debt it has been seriously asserted by wise 
men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. 
Yet still the debt went on growing ; and still 
bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. 
When the great contest with Lewis the Four- 
teenth was finally terminated by the Peace of 
Utrecht the nation owed about fifty millions ; 
and that debt was considered, not merely by 
the rude multitude, not merely by foxhunt- 
ing squires and coffee-house orators, but by 
acute and profound thinkers, as an incum- 
brance which would permanently cripple the 
192 



The Origin of the National Debt 

body politic. Nevertheless trade flourished : 
wealth increased ; the nation became richer, 
and richer. Then came the war of the Austri- 
an Succession: and the debt rose to eighty mil- 
lions. Pamphleteers, historians, and orators 
pronounced that now, at all events, our case 
was desperate.* Yet the signs of increasing 
prosperity, signs which could neither be coun- 
terfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied 
observant and reflecting men that a debt ot 
eighty millions was less to the England which 
was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty 
millions had been to the England which was 
governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke 
forth ; and under the energetic and prodigal 
administration of the first William Pitt, the 
debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty 
millions. As soon as the first intoxication 
of victory was over, men of theory and men 
of business almost unanimously pronounced 
that the fatal day had now really arrived. 
The only statesman, indeed, active or specu- 
lative, who was too wise to share in the 

* Smollett's Complete History of England from the Descent 
of Julius Caesar to the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle, 1748, con- 
taining the Transactions of one thousand eight hundred and 
three years, was published at this time. The work ends with 
a vehement philippic against the government ; and that philip- 
pic ends with the tremendous words, " the national debt ac- 
cumulated to the enormous sum of eighty millions sterling." 

*3 J 93 



The Origin of the National Debt 

general delusion, was Edmund Burke. David 
Hume, undoubtedly one of the most profound 
political economists of his time, declared that 
our madness had exceeded the madness of 
the Crusaders. Richard Cceur de Lion and 
Saint Lewis had gone in the face of arith- 
metical demonstration. It was impossible to 
prove by figures that the road to Paradise 
did not lie through the Holy Land : but it 
was possible to prove by figures that the 
road to national ruin was through the national 
debt. It was idle, however, now to talk about 
the road : we had done with the road : we had 
reached the goal : all was over : all the rev- 
enues of the island north of Trent and west 
of Reading were mortgaged. Better for us 
to have been conquered by Prussia or Austria, 
than ta be saddled with the interest of a 
hundred and forty millions.* And yet this 
great philosopher — for such he was, — had 
only to open his eyes, and to see improve- 
ment all around him, cities increasing, culti- 
vation extending, marts too small for the 
crowd of buyers and sellers, harbors insuffi- 
cient to contain the shipping, artificial rivers 
joining the chief inland seats of industry to 
the chief seaports, streets better lighted, 

* See a very remarkable note in Hume's History of Eng- 
land, Appendix III. 

I94 



The Origin of the National Debt 

houses better furnished, richer wares exposed 
to sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages 
rolling along smoother roads. He had, in- 
deed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his 
boyhood with the Edinburgh of his old age. 
His prediction remains to posterity, a mem- 
orable instance of the weakness from which 
the strongest minds are not exempt. Adam 
Smith saw a little, and but a little further. 
He admitted that, immense as the pressure 
was, the nation did actually sustain it and 
thrive under it in a way which nobody could 
have foreseen. But he warned his country- 
men not to repeat so hazardous an experiment. 
The limit had been reached. Even a small 
increase might be fatal. * Not less gloomy 
was the view which George Grenville, a min- 
ister eminently diligent and practical, took of 
our financial situation. The nation must, he 
conceived, sink under a debt of a hundred and 
forty millions, unless a portion of the load 
were borne by the American colonies. The 
attempt to lay a portion of the load on the 
American colonies produced another war. 
That war left us with an additional hundred 
millions of debt, and without the colonies 
whose help had been represented as indis- 
pensable. Again England was given over ; 

* Wealth of Nations, book v. Chap' i i i. 

195 



The Origin of the National Debt 

and again the strange patient persisted in 
becoming stronger and more blooming in 
spite of all the diagnostics and prognostics 
of State physicians. As she had been visibly 
more prosperous with a debt of one hundred 
and forty millions than with a debt of fifty 
millions, so she was visibly more prosperous 
with a debt of two hundred and forty millions 
than with a debt of one hundred and forty 
millions. Soon however the wars which 
sprang from the French Revolution, and 
which far exceeded in cost any that the world 
had ever seen, tasked the powers of public 
credit to the utmost. When the world was 
again at rest the funded debt of England 
amounted to eight hundred millions. If the 
most enlightened man had been told, in 1792, 
that, in 181 5, the interest on eight hundred 
millions would be duly paid to the day at the 
Bank, he would have been as hard of belief 
as if he had been told that the government 
would be in possession of the lamp of Aladdin 
or of the purse of Fortunatus. It w T as in 
truth a gigantic, a fabulous, debt ; and we 
can hardly wonder that the cry of despair 
should have been louder than ever. But 
again that cry w T as found to have been as 
unreasonable as ever. After a few years of 
exhaustion, England recovered herself. Yet 
196 



The Origin of the National Debt 

like Addison's valetudinarian, who continued 
to whimper that he was dying of consump- 
tion till he became so fat that he was shamed 
into silence, she went on complaining that 
she was sunk in poverty till her wealth 
showed itself by tokens which made her 
complaints ridiculous. The beggared, the 
bankrupt, society not only proved able to 
meet all its obligations, but while meeting 
those obligations, grew richer and richer so 
fast that the growth could almost be dis- 
cerned by the eye. In every county, we saw 
wastes recently turned into gardens : in every 
city, we saw new streets, and squares, and 
markets, more brilliant lamps, more abun- 
dant supplies of water : in the suburbs of every 
great seat of industry, we saw villas multi- 
plying fast, each embosomed in its gay little 
paradise of lilacs and roses. While shallow 
politicians were repeating that the energies 
of the people were borne down by the weight 
of the public burdens, the first journey was per- 
formed by steam on a railway. Soon the island 
was intersected by railways. A sum exceed- 
ing the whole amount of the national debt at 
the end of the American war was, in a few 
years, voluntarily expended by this ruined 
people on viaducts, tunnels, embankments, 
bridges, stations, engines. Meanwhile tax- 
197 



The Origin of the National Debt 

ation was almost constantly becoming lighter 
and lighter : yet still the Exchequer was full. 
It may be now affirmed without fear of con- 
tradiction that we find it as easy to pay the 
interest of eight hundred millions as our an- 
cestors found it, a century ago, to pay the 
interest of eighty millions. 

It can hardly be doubted that there must 
have been some great fallacy in the notions 
of those who uttered and of those who be- 
lieved that long succession of confident pre- 
dictions, so signally falsified by a long suc- 
cession of indisputable facts. To point out 
that fallacy is the office rather of the political 
economist than of the historian. Here it is 
sufficient to say that the prophets of evil were 
under a double delusion. They erroneously 
imagined that there was an exact analogy 
between the case of an individual who is in 
debt to another individual and the case of a 
society which is in debt to a part of itself; 
and this analogy led them into endless mis- 
takes about the effect of the system of fund- 
ing. They were under an error not less 
serious touching the resources of the country. 
They made no allowance for the effect pro- 
duced by the incessant progress of every ex- 
perimental science, and by the incessant 
effort of every man to get on in life. They 
198 



The Origin of the National Debt 

saw that the debt grew : and they forgot that 
other things grew as well as the debt. 

A long experience justifies us in believing 
that England may, in the twentieth century, 
be better able to pay a debt of sixteen hun- 
dred millions than she is at the present time 
to bear her present load. But be this as it 
may, those who so confidently predicted that 
she must sink, first under a debt oi fifty mil- 
lions, then under a debt of eighty millions, 
then under a debt of a hundred and forty mil- 
lions, then under a debt of two hundred and 
forty millions, and lastly under a debt of eight 
hundred millions, were beyond all doubt 
under a twofold mistake. They greatly 
overrated the pressure of the burden : they 
greatly underrated the strength by which 
the burden was to be borne. * 

* I have said that Burke alone among his contemporaries was 
superior to the vulgar error in which men so eminent as David 
Hume and Adam Smith shared. I will quote, in illustration of 
my meaning, a few weighty words from the Observations on 
the Late State of the Nation written by Burke in 1769. "An 
enlightened reader laughs at the inconsistent chimera of our 
author (George Grenville), of a people universally luxurious, 
and at the same time oppressed with taxes and declining in 
trade. For my part, I cannot look on these duties as the 
author does. He sees nothing but the burden. I can perceive 
the burden as well as he : but I cannot avoid contemplating 
also the strength that supports it. From thence I draw the 
most comfortable assurances of the future vigor and the ample 
resources of this great misrepresented country." 

199 



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